Little Black Book of Murder

by Nancy Martin

  In the gathering dusk, she hauled me down the brick steps and across the street. Our high heels clattered on the pavement. A taxi screeched to a halt at the sight of Emma. The headlights illuminated the two of us in the middle of the street. Emma was a neon vision of hot pink sex. A man hung out the taxi’s window and yelled, “C’mon, baby, light my fire!”

  She flipped him a universal hand signal and kept going. To me, she said, “Yesterday after I dropped you off, I went out to Starr’s Landing to make sure the farm animals were off the property. While I was there in the afternoon, who shows up at the farm but Porky?”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “He crashed a car through the gate, but I don’t think that was intentional. He’s a maniac behind the wheel. Anyway, I think his plan was to tamper with the crime scene.”

  “Gee, there’s a lot of that going around.”

  “Shut up.” She yanked open the door of her pickup, and there was Porky Starr, lolling in the passenger seat, sweaty-­faced, half conscious, his bald head shining in the light of the streetlamp. If not for his seat belt, he’d have toppled out onto the pavement at our feet.

  I stood in the street, tapping my foot. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s drunk. Loaded. Smashed out of his gourd.”

  I faced her. “And you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  She exploded, saying, “I’ve got the guy who might be able to clear Rawlins, and all you’re worried about is if I’ve had a beer?”

  She looked sober. I just couldn’t imagine her putting on that Versace unless she’d knocked back a few strong drinks. She even wore a pair of very fashionable strappy heels. I squinted more closely. Yep. Earrings, too. Maybe even lipstick.

  “That’s not the only thing on my mind at the moment,” I said. “But I’ll put everything else aside for the time being. What have you learned from Porky?”

  “That he’s terrible in the sack.”

  “Oh, Em! You didn’t!”

  “No, I didn’t,” she snapped, voice dripping with disgust. “But he tried. This kid has learned all he knows about sex from watching porn. I don’t put up with that shit. Shove him over and get in.”

  I unbuckled Porky and tried to push him to the center of the seat. Emma went around to the driver’s side and pulled him from her angle. Porky groaned. Between the two of us, we got him into position and fastened the belt around him.

  I said, “If he upchucks on this suit, I’m going to be furious.”

  “He hasn’t had anything to eat since yesterday.”

  “Where was he last night when you took your midnight ride?”

  “Handcuffed to a bed.”

  I didn’t want to imagine what had transpired between the former child actor and my little sister. I hoped she was kidding. We got into the truck and buckled up. Emma pulled away from the curb.

  I said, “Where are we going?”

  “Just listen.” While she drove, Emma lit a cigarette. “After I found Porky sneaking onto Starr’s Landing, I rode Twinkles back to your place; then I drove up the road and found Porky hiding in some bushes, watching the farm. I took him to a bar and got him liquored up. And we talked. We talked a lot. I know more than any human being should have to know about how to con suburban mothers out of thousands of dollars in the hope of making their kids famous. I mean, what the hell? Would you want your kids earning a living by doing kitty litter commercials? Making asses of themselves on reality TV? Not to mention a whole other world of degradation. Do you have any idea what Porky has in mind for the twins?”

  “Advertising chewing gum?”

  “No. Twins are the hot new thing in X-­rated movies. First chance he gets, Porky wants to measure their dicks.”

  “Oh my God!” Appalled, I said, “They’re not even fourteen! I don’t want to think about my nephews without their clothes on, let alone—”

  “I know, I know. We gotta get Libby off this kick, and fast.”

  Porky tried to speak. He managed a couple of disjointed syllables and dozed off to sleep again. His head lolled against my shoulder. I tried not to shudder.

  Emma said, “And I found out who invited Rawlins to the party at Starr’s Landing.”

  “Porky?”

  “Nope. Zephyr.”

  Again, I was surprised. “Why would she invite Rawlins? Does she even know him?”

  “Porky introduced them. He got all squirrelly when he told me about that.”

  Emma found her destination, and she pulled into a parking lot. She shut off the engine and pulled her six-­pack cooler out from behind her seat. She said, “Hand me that bag on the floor, will you?”

  “Why are we here?” I looked out the windshield at a hotel sign. We had come a little more than a mile out of the city, I guessed. The hotel was nothing fancy, the kind of place where salesmen stayed for a night while on business. Emma had pulled into the only check-­in parking space. Through glass doors, I could see people wheeling suitcases around a brightly lit lobby.

  I hefted a backpack off the floor. It felt lumpy inside and gave a clink of metal. But instead of giving it to Emma, I hugged it against me. I said, “I’m not cooperating yet.”

  Emma’s expression hardened. “Hand me the bag, Nora.”

  “Tell me what’s in it first.”

  She cranked down her window and pitched her cigarette out into the darkness. Then she made a swipe for the bag, but Porky slumped between us and hampered her effort.

  I unzipped the bag and peeked inside. Even more thoroughly confused, I lifted out a piece of equipment—­plastic and metal with a cone at one end and something like a trigger at the other. A medical device. Or an instrument of torture.

  I gasped. “Em, what in the world have you been doing to him?”

  “I haven’t done a damn thing to him! It’s a breast pump!”

  “A—? What are you doing with a breast pump?”

  “What do you think?” With both hands, she indicated her substantial cleavage. “I’ve been pumping!”

  “You—? Why?”

  “For the baby, of course! Hart and his idiot wife were feeding him formula, but he has a—­like, a delicate stomach. So the real thing, you know, makes him feel better. And I thought the kid ought to have the extra nutrition from breast milk. It has all kinds of good, like, benefits.”

  “So that’s what’s in the cooler? Breast milk?”

  “Well, yeah.” Emma was starting to look sheepish. “I pump, then bottle it and freeze it at the Rusty Sabre. They’ve got a big freezer there, and Jay keeps an eye on it for me. A couple times a week I drop off a supply so the kid can, you know, drink it.”

  “Em, that’s—­I’m surprised.” Flabbergasted was more like it. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with your baby.”

  “I don’t. I’m not. I just—­twice a day I have to pump myself like a dairy cow or I feel like I’m going to explode. And I’m already starting to leak.” She pressed her forearms to her breasts and held her breath to stem the tide of what surely must have been a substantial flow. “So you have to wait here with Porky while I go into the bathroom and take care of it.”

  I put the pump back into the backpack. “The toy you’ve been looking for. The Filly Vanilli thing. Is that for your baby, too?”

  “He’s not my baby.”

  “Is the toy for Hart’s baby?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He likes music. I thought the Filly Vanilli would be a nice, you know, going-­away present.”

  I was glad to be sitting down, because I probably would have fallen over otherwise. I held out the backpack. “Okay, go. I’ll babysit your passenger. Then we’re going to have a discussion.”

  She eyed me with a gratifying amount of trepidation. “I can guess what that’s about.”<
br />
  “Yes, you can,” I said dangerously. “Michael told me what happened between you two. But first, go pump. Here.”

  “Thanks,” she said, grabbing a strap. “Just one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you tell Libby about any of this, I’m gonna kill you.”

  The last thing either of us wanted was a weakness that Libby could jump on the way a night owl comes screaming out of the darkness to sink its talons into a helpless field mouse. She would be relentless with Emma—­giving advice, offering unwanted opinions, the works. I didn’t envy Emma the difficulty of keeping her secret from our pushy older sister.

  She slammed out of the truck and disappeared into the hotel, leaving me with a softly snoring Porter Starr.

  So Emma hadn’t been able to give up her child as easily as she pretended. Three months later, she was still pumping—­and delivering milk to the home of Hart, her lover, and his new wife.

  I tried to put myself in Emma’s shoes. I found myself remembering the long months of her pregnancy. Her hormones had made her überemotional. She had spent months constantly hungry, and eating day and night. She had lost her waistline early and developed an enormous belly fast.

  As I counted up her list of symptoms, suddenly the sky opened up over my head, and a bright light penetrated my thick skull. The illumination electrified every nerve ending in my brain, and the angels sang. I put both hands on my stomach as the shock dissipated into woozy amazement.

  When Emma returned and got behind the wheel, she took one look at my face and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Em, we need to find a drugstore.”

  “Sure.” She started the engine. “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  “What for?”

  I swallowed hard. “I’m pretty sure I need a pregnancy test.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I felt foolish for having missed the signs. But I’d spent nearly a year after a heartbreaking miscarriage trying to get pregnant, with no results. Every month, I’d dreaded the recurrence of my period. Eventually, it had gotten so depressing that I stopped keeping track of the dates. For the last few weeks I must have been firmly in denial. When I started gaining a little weight, I assumed it was because I couldn’t resist all the food Michael had lovingly made for me. Lately, when I hadn’t felt great in the morning, I’d assumed I was suffering the aftereffects of discovering a dead body.

  But now I suspected otherwise.

  And the possibility made me giddy. Elated. Also a little scared. But definitely eager to find out for sure if I was carrying a baby at long last.

  Unfortunately, when I came out of the drugstore with my plastic bag, Porky Starr had begun to regain consciousness.

  “Yo,” he said woozily when I climbed in beside him. “Who’re you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re not a long-­term thing.”

  While struggling with my seat belt, I fumbled the bag, and it upended. Into his lap dropped the box containing the home pregnancy test.

  His grabbed it, and his eyes widened. “Yo! Not you, too? Did we do it, baby? How were you?”

  “Me, too?” I repeated, holding the box up so he could see exactly what it was. “Do you know who else needed one of these things?”

  He tried to collect his wits by shaking his head adamantly. “No way I’m talking, yo.”

  Curious, Em said to me, “What’s up?”

  To Emma, I said, “I found a pregnancy test in the car Rawlins was driving. And the test was positive.”

  “You’ve been holding out on me, Sis.”

  “I thought if anyone had information that shouldn’t be mentioned to the police, it was better if I kept it to myself.”

  “So? Who’s pregnant? Besides maybe you?”

  “I assumed Rawlins. Libby said he had a girlfriend.”

  She looked surprised. “Hasn’t Libby had the Talk with him yet?”

  “Of course she has. And she started giving him condoms before he hit junior high. He must have made a mistake.”

  “A very big mistake.” Emma wasted no time grabbing Porky by his ear.

  “Hey!” he cried.

  “Shut up, nimrod. You’re in no position to deny us anything at the moment. Who’s pregnant?”

  “Nuh-­uh,” he said. “That’s nobody’s business but ours, yo.”

  “Yours?” I asked. “Not Rawlins’s?”

  “Rawlins? You mean the kid with the cool car?”

  “You don’t even know his name?” I cried. “He’s under suspicion of murdering your father!”

  Blearily, Porter rubbed his face with both hands. “I could use something to get my buzz back, yo. You girls have any good stuff on you?”

  “Listen, Yo Yo,” Emma said. “I’m gonna stuff something down your throat in a minute, like maybe my fist. Who’s pregnant?”

  He let out a whine of frustration and finally said, “Zephyr.”

  “Zephyr?” Emma and I said in unison.

  Em said, “Who’s the father?”

  Porky began to turn green before our eyes. “Yo, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Tell us who the father is. You? Or her husband?”

  “C’mon, I’m gonna blow!”

  I bailed out of the truck and helped Porky to the pavement. He staggered over to some bushes at the edge of the parking lot, and the next minute we could hear him dry heaving.

  Emma stayed in the truck, but she was shaking her head. “He’s a moron. But a stubborn moron.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to get any more information out of him,” I said. “Zephyr’s hold on him is too strong, and she’s dangerous.”

  “Huh?”

  “Zephyr has a surprisingly long record when it comes to murder.” The idea that the black widow might be pregnant gave me the willies. “I say we go to Blackbird Farm and regroup.”

  “You got it,” Emma said. “Climb in. He can find his own way home, yo.”

  Emma spun the wheel and pointed the truck ­toward Blackbird Farm. I said, “Or maybe we should be going to Hart’s house first? To drop off the contents of your cooler? You put on that dress just for the occasion, didn’t you?”

  She grinned at the road ahead. “Yeah, maybe I did. To show him what he’s missing.”

  I didn’t like Emma’s habit of dating married men. It had come too close to home for me when she tried to seduce Michael. I knew that kind of behavior suited her—­good sex without commitment or the risk of intimacy that she found so difficult after the death of her much-­loved husband.

  But I said, “Did you ever think to try the opposite tactic?”

  “What tactic?”

  “Show Hart what you’ve got on the inside, Em.” As she stayed silent, I said, “Michael told me. About asking you to leave the farm.”

  “He didn’t exactly ask,” Emma said. “And, okay, I deserved it.”

  “You did. But I know what you were doing. And it wasn’t just looking for quick sex.”

  “Mick’s a sexy guy.”

  “Don’t be flippant,” I said. “I’m being serious here. He may come from the wrong side of the tracks, and he may have done some bad things, but Michael is surprisingly dependable.”

  “He’s a good guy,” Emma agreed quietly.

  “Yes,” I said. “So I know why you wanted to turn to him. You need someone in your life who doesn’t run away when things get difficult. Is Hart that kind of man?”

  Emma’s jaw was tight as she drove, as if she didn’t trust herself to answer.

  “When you find someone you really want, Em, you have to open up first. You have to show your tender side, too.”

  She snorted. “I don’t have a tender side, Sis. What you see is what you get.”

  “I see a woman who’s pumping milk for a baby sh
e gave away. A baby she hoped to forget about.”

  “The alternative is sore tits.”

  I shook my head. “Part of you can’t let go of that child. Part of you wants to be with Hart and your baby. But you haven’t told him that, have you?”

  “He doesn’t want to hear it. He’s with Penny now.”

  “Is he really?”

  “He married her! He made his choice. And he has the kid, too, so what else is there?”

  I heard the anger in her voice. Also a note of vulnerability. More gently, I said, “You had something wonderful with Jake, Em, and now you’re afraid to try again. I know exactly how scary it feels to throw yourself off that cliff again and wonder if somebody’s going to catch you.”

  “Hart’s not the type to catch anybody.” The acid was back.

  “Then why do you like him so much?”

  “I dunno. Maybe I don’t.” She slammed the steering wheel with her fist. “I hate the mess in my head!”

  In the resulting quiet, I said, “I’m worried about you, Em. About what you said last night. About not having anything left to lose.”

  She let out a bitter laugh but didn’t answer.

  “Setting fire to Swain Starr’s barn. Em, that was a terrible thing to do.”

  “Not if it protects Rawlins.”

  “We could have found another way,” I insisted. “A way that didn’t include committing a crime. We know Rawlins didn’t kill Swain Starr. Eventually the police are going to figure that out, too. But destroying property was wrong.”

  “Nobody was there. Not so much as a piglet. Besides, if Zephyr wants to rebuild the barn, she has more money than God to do it, and she’ll employ half the county again to make it perfect.”

  “That doesn’t make what you did—”

  “Nobody would have known it was me if you hadn’t come traipsing out to talk to me last night.”

  “You’re off the rails,” I said. “You’re taking bigger and bigger risks. First it was riding dangerous horses, and now it’s lighting a match to gasoline. You’re breaking the law! What’s next?”

  “I can take care of myself. It’s Rawlins I’m worried about. Do you think he was at the farm the night Swain was killed?”