Little Black Book of Murder

by Nancy Martin

  “Maybe we should be concentrating on Rawlins right now, Lib.”

  Busy at the stove, Michael said over his shoulder, “Cannoli and Sons should be calling me soon. We’ll get an update.”

  “What could the police be doing to my son?” Libby cried. “Are they torturing him?”

  “Only if he drank the soda they offered,” Michael said. “It’s the first trick in the book. If he drinks it and has to take a leak, he’ll be miserable, and that’s what they want.”

  “Rawlins wouldn’t fall for that.” I patted Libby’s shoulder. “He watches plenty of Law and Order. He’ll be fine. They’re just asking him questions.”

  “For all this time?”

  Unaware that I was trying to ease my sister’s mind, Michael said, “They’ll make him sweat first. Standard procedure. When he’s tired and cranky, they’ll start. But Cannoli will handle it. Nothing to worry about.”

  Libby got up and snatched Max from Michael’s arm. “Except the damage to my family’s reputation. I’ve always been grateful my children don’t bear the Blackbird name. They don’t need that kind of bad publicity. But this is too much.”

  Zephyr had been standing at the counter, picking a grilled cheese sandwich apart with her fingers to nibble the cheese inside. She dropped bits of bread into the sink. “What kind of bad publicity?”

  Libby said, “Our parents borrowed money they couldn’t repay, then fled the country two steps ahead of the police. It was very embarrassing. Thank heavens our grandparents didn’t live to see the destruction of the family name. Then Nora took up with—”

  “Libby,” I said.

  “Well,” Libby said, “then there’s the Blackbird curse.”

  Zephyr ate more cheese, but looked intrigued. “What curse?”

  “All Blackbird women are unlucky in love. We marry in haste, and our husbands die.”

  “How do they die?” Zephyr asked. “You mean you kill them?”

  Libby let out a trilling laugh. “Of course not, darling. They just die. Accidents, mostly. My first husband died in the pursuit of whale hunters. He was harpooned and drowned. Of course, Nora’s husband was shot. My second husband was, too. Or was Ralph my third? Emma’s husband was killed in a car wreck. Our aunt Dorothy’s third—”

  Zephyr said to me, “Did you shoot your husband?”

  “No,” I replied. “He was shot in a drug deal.”

  “Bummer,” she said. She jerked her head at Michael. “What about him?”

  “I’m fine,” Michael said. “I take my vitamins and stay out of trouble.”

  “He goes to church a lot, too,” I said. “And prays.”

  He sent me a grin and slid a plate in front of me. Suddenly starved, I ate my grilled cheese in no time.

  Zephyr said, “Maybe I’m cursed, too.”

  Libby’s cell phone played a version of “It’s Raining Men,” and she grabbed it. A minute later, she seized her coat and headed for the door. “It’s the lawyers! They need me now! I get to see Rawlins! I’ll be back in the morning, Nora. Take care of my children overnight, will you?”

  “Doesn’t Lucy have school tomorrow?”

  “She can be a little late.”

  “Why don’t you take the twins with you?” I asked, trying not to beg too desperately. “Think how much they’d enjoy seeing the inside of a police station.”

  “They’ll be happier here,” she said, shouldering her handbag and reaching for the door. “They have a project going in the barn.”

  “What project?” I asked, my blood pressure spiking.

  “Maybe they need to do some research,” Michael suggested, sounding casual. “You know, in case they have to create a character for a whattayacallit, an audition.”

  Libby’s face went through several contortions—­consideration, rejection, rethinking, the dawn of hope for television stardom, then finally a decision. “You’ve got a point. I’ll take the twins. See you in the morning!”

  Michael and I barely held back our sighs of relief.

  Then Michael said, “Nora, what happened to your sandwich?”

  I couldn’t remember what I’d done with my grilled cheese, although I seemed to be licking my fingers. I peeked up at him. “Uhm, do you mind making me another one?”

  Later, when we’d found places for everybody to sleep and I had showed Zephyr the guest bedroom with its antique bed and extra blankets in case the furnace quit for good, I locked the door of our bedroom and slid under the heap of covers with Michael.

  He gathered me up to warm me. “What’s the matter with you? Lucy always sleeps on the couch downstairs so her imaginary friend can play the piano.”

  “Shh. She’s perfectly happy with a sleeping bag in my closet.”

  He dropped his voice to a whisper, too. “We could put Max’s crib across the hall.”

  “He’ll be safer in here with us.”

  “Safer? What’s got into you? I told Dolph he had to spend the night on the staircase because you asked. What’s going on?”

  Alone at last, I told him the information Gus had given to me about Zephyr and her various dead boyfriends. “We think she killed them all,” I said as quietly as I could manage. “Starting with her father.”

  Michael rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling to absorb what I had told him. “Your editor thinks Zephyr is a serial killer? What do they drink down there in Australia? She’s a perfectly nice girl. Not too smart, maybe, but she’s kinda sweet.”

  “Are you listening to me? She probably killed at least three men. And you could be next!”

  Michael rolled up on one elbow again and tried to subdue me with a kiss. “Nora, sweetheart, you’ve had a bad couple of days.”

  “You were the one who said she shot her father!”

  “Maybe I was wrong.” Michael gave up trying to comfort me. The bedroom was dark, but I could see him forming an opinion. Finally, he shook his head. “She seems really nice.”

  “As soon as she flashes her chest and gives you the smoldering glance, you’re suddenly an expert judge of character?”

  “You’re a little nuts tonight. Why don’t I try calming you down?”

  I settled into the bedclothes and pulled the sheet up to my chin. “Not with Max and Lucy right here.”

  “They’re asleep.” He slid his hand under the covers to touch me. “We could be really quiet.”

  I gave him a chaste kiss. “Good night.”

  It was the first time I had been alone with him to talk since my horrible scene with Gus. There was so much to tell him. How Gus had heard us in the scullery, how he’d manipulated me, how I’d caused Sammy to lose his job. How I’d quit, then gone back and asked for my job back. And that damned kiss. Eventually, I was going to have to tell Michael about all of that. But I was too tired to relate it all just then. In fact, I heard him say something more about Zephyr, but I was already half asleep. Before he finished, I heard myself exhale a little snore.

  Michael tucked me against his frame and let me drift off to dreamland.

  But in the middle of the night, something woke me. I lay still, aware that Michael was awake, too.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked softly, still not sure what I had heard. A noise in the house? Or something outside?

  “Yeah.” Michael was already half out of bed and reaching for his cell phone.

  I sat up, too. “What is it?”

  “Sirens,” he said, already dialing. As he punched the keypad, we heard a large vehicle pass by the farm, whooping. A red light flashed across the bedroom walls.

  While Michael spoke to one of his men at the bottom of the driveway, I slipped out of bed and hurried into the closet to check on Lucy. She was snug in her sleeping bag, sound asleep. I slid my dressing gown off its hanger and put it on. When I came out of the closet, Michael was already zipping hi
s jeans.

  He spoke quietly, so as not to wake Max. “The guys think something’s on fire up the road. Something big.”

  A fire at Blackbird Farm was my worst nightmare. Involuntarily, I put both hands over my mouth.

  Michael touched my face. “There’s nothing you can do. Stay here with the kids.”

  “Where are you going?” I whispered.

  “Outside. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He let himself out of the bedroom, and of course I followed, fastening the satin belt on my elaborate vintage robe. Dolph was sitting on the top step, slurping from a coffee cup and leafing through a bodybuilder magazine. He barely looked up when Michael went down the staircase. But he stared up at me as if I had just walked off the set of a British costume drama on the arm of Prince William.

  I said to him, “Stay here. Make sure nobody goes into the bedroom.”

  “Nobody, like who?” he asked.

  I didn’t respond but followed Michael down the stairs and through the dark house. I slid my bare feet into my gardening boots. The kitchen door was open, and I caught up with Michael on the back porch. In the moonlight, he stood still, looking north.

  The sky glowed orange, and an eerie light flickered through the trees.

  “What’s up there?” Michael asked when I arrived at his side.

  “That’s Starr’s Landing. Oh, Michael.”

  He put his arm around me, and we stood together, watching the fire light up the horizon. The night air was cold around us. He said, “Is anybody still staying in the house?”

  “No, nobody. With Zephyr here, the house is empty. And they moved all the livestock off the property on Sunday. Emma helped.” The first whiffs of smoke began to drift down. I felt an ache in my chest at the thought of the destruction of the beautiful landscape Swain Starr had created—­his last masterpiece. I said, “I hope the firemen are safe.”

  In a cryptic tone, Michael said, “I hope the insurance was paid up.”

  “I should wake up Zephyr and tell her.”

  Michael caught my elbow as I turned. “What’s she going to do? Help put out the fire? Let her sleep and tell her in the morning.”

  “Maybe you’re right. She’s not as attached to the place as I thought she’d be.” Not the way I felt about Blackbird Farm, anyway. “She didn’t want to go home to it.”

  “Y’know,” Michael said, still thoughtfully watching the glow on the horizon, “it’s a convenient night for the place to burn, isn’t it?”

  “What are you saying?”

  But I knew. A modern house and that beautiful barn? I had seen the sprinklers myself, and I knew Swain had taken pains to make sure the place would survive a stray cigarette butt. The fire was no accident.

  Michael’s cell phone rang in his pocket, and he went back into the kitchen to take the call.

  I stood for a while longer on the porch, watching the molten glow in the sky.

  But I had already sensed something moving around in my barn. I waited until I knew Michael was engaged in his phone call. Then, in darkness, I slipped down the steps and went across the wet grass. A sliver of moon shone down through the still leafless oaks overhead, dappling the ground with meager light.

  I caught my balance on the open door of the barn.

  “Em?” I said.

  Mr. Twinkles threw up his head and snorted. Emma turned from the act of pulling a saddle from his back.

  I said, “What are you doing? It’s three in the morning.”

  She had changed back into boots and jeans with a dark pullover buttoned up to her throat. Her face was white in the half-­light.

  Startled, she cursed. “How come you’re awake?”

  In the barn, I made my way around Michael’s fix-­up car parked beside a stack of hay bales. “I asked first. I thought you had a date.”

  “His water bed sprang a leak.”

  She had tied Toby to the stall door, and the spaniel lay quietly, listening to our voices. Mr. Twinkles was sweating, his eyes luminous, his nostrils distended. When she pulled the saddle off him, I could see his coat matted down from the saddle pad.

  I said, “You’ve been out riding. In the dark.”

  “I took Sheffield Road.” She threw the saddle over the stall bars and set about unfastening the cheek buckles on the horse’s bridle.

  “Em, what have you done?” I said, and my voice sounded hollow.

  When she didn’t answer, I said, “I can smell the gasoline.”

  “Then take care of Twinkles,” she snapped, “while I change. Mick will be here looking for you any minute.”

  My fingers shook on the bridle, but I managed to get it off the horse and slide the bit from his mouth. He nuzzled my hair and gave me a shove with his nose, still full of energy. His legs were mud-­spattered, but he was also wet up to his knees and hocks as if he’d splashed through a stream. I used a rag to rub the worst of the mud from him.

  While I cleaned up the horse, Emma went to the back of the barn where she’d parked her truck to conceal it. She pulled her sweater over her head and threw it into the straw. I could see her shucking off her boots next, and then her jeans. She climbed into the truck and rummaged for something else to wear.

  I gave Mr. Twinkles a slap on his haunch, and he swung willingly into his stall. I went with him and ran a brush over his damp coat while he munched on a mouthful of hay.

  Emma came back, yanking a T-shirt over her head. Her buff riding breeches were clean. She had found a pair of sneakers, too. At the water trough, she dunked her head and swished her short hair around to rid herself of the last fumes of gasoline. When she came up for air, she shook her head like a dog coming out of a lake and reached for the beer that she had balanced on the rim of the trough. She snapped the top and took a long, thirsty slug.

  I said, “Tell me you didn’t do something terrible.”

  She drank a little more.

  A rush of fury boiled up inside me, and I batted the can out of her hand. It landed in the straw off in the darkness.

  “Screw you,” she said.

  I grabbed her by the arm. “What have you done, Emma?”

  Matching my anger, she said, “On Sunday I found Rawlins’s jacket in Starr’s barn.”

  Still holding her arm, but frozen with dread, I listened.

  She said, “I figured either he’d been there, or he was being set up. When I heard the police nabbed him, I figured somebody better do something in case he left any other evidence at the farm.”

  “My God.” I had known Emma was on the brink of something bad, but this was far more than my imagination could conjure up.

  She pulled out of my grasp and ran both hands through her short, wet hair. “Maybe it was a stupid thing to do. Or crazy. But if somebody’s going to get caught helping Rawlins, it might as well be me. I got nothing left to lose, right?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  She had been drinking long before she’d left the barn on Mr. Twinkles and ridden the back road to Starr’s Landing. I couldn’t judge how drunk she was, but she certainly wasn’t sober.

  I said, “We love you, Em. We don’t want you to go to jail any more than Rawlins. You can’t run around in the middle of the night setting fire to—”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Forget I was here. Go back to bed. Go back to Mick and make a baby. Let me do what has to be done.”

  “You’re not thinking straight. Giving your child to Hart has made you—”

  “It hasn’t done anything to me, so forget it. Get out of here. I’ll sleep in the truck for a couple of hours and go to work before anyone—”

  Behind me, Michael said, “Before anyone what?”

  Both of us nearly jumped out of our skins. We spun around and faced him. He had pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket over his otherwise bare chest. Emma and I must have st
ared at him stupidly.

  He laughed. “The two of you look like you just robbed a bank. What’s going on?”

  “We’re having a fight,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “I want Emma to come into the house and sleep in a bed. But she’s determined to stay out here in the barn. Make her see reason, will you?”

  He looked past me at my sister, no longer amused. “She knows what’s best for herself.”

  Behind him, a set of headlights suddenly swept across the yard, and we heard the crunch of tires in the gravel. Michael glanced over his shoulder.

  “State police are here,” he reported. “So get your alibi in order, ladies.”

  He turned to intercept the cop who got out of the cruiser.

  It was Ricci, the trooper I’d spoken to at the impound lot. Michael shook his hand, and they exchanged a sentence or two before Ricci came to the open barn door and directed a blazing flashlight in my face. He said, “Everything all right here?”

  “We have a sick horse,” I said. “My sister’s taking care of him.”

  The flashlight illuminated Emma’s face next, but she didn’t flinch. She said calmly, “Don’t scare him. He’s a valuable animal.”

  Ricci paced into the barn and used the light to skim past Michael’s parked car to Mr. Twinkles, now nervously eyeing the growing crowd and shifting his feet in the straw. He still looked hot and sweaty to me, but maybe Ricci had no experience with animals.

  The trooper put his flashlight back on me, letting it slide down my figure. He said, “That’s some getup you’re wearing tonight.”

  There was no covering up the low décolletage of the vintage dressing gown I’d picked up in a Paris thrift shop years ago. The straps of my black silk nightie showed, too, making me look like an escapee from a French boudoir. For an instant, I thought Michael was going to step in front of the light to shield me, but he thought better of it and let the trooper take a long look.

  I said, “I didn’t plan on running around in public like this. What’s going on? There’s a fire?”

  Ricci shut off the flashlight. “Yeah, the barn at Starr’s Landing is burning. I thought I should stop here and make sure everybody’s okay.”