by Nancy Martin
“I’m just glad Merrie’s learning how to ride safely. It’s a dangerous sport.”
Of course Tim would be concerned about his daughter’s well-being. He, more than most anyone, knew how fast life could change. “I’m sure Emma takes every precaution.”
“Emma’s been wonderful,” he said.
“I hear you’ve been nominated for Chief of Pediatrics at your hospital. Congratulations.”
“Oh. Yes. I’m one of several nominees.”
“Good luck. I’m sure you’re the man for the job.”
Neither of us had a chance to say anything more.
We heard screaming.
From the direction of the other stable wing came shouts for help and one long, hysterical, babbling shriek. Tim and I turned together and Spike wriggled his head out of my bag.
He barked when he saw Libby stumble into view.
Rushing toward us, she looked dreadful. Windblown and terrified, she’d lost her hat somewhere, but one of the pheasant feathers was sticking out of her hair. She screamed as if she’d been stabbed.
I ran to Libby and caught her shoulders. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
She gasped. “Come quick.”
She grabbed my arm and I went with her, my heart slamming in my chest. I heard Tim and Merrie behind us, and we all ran across the stable yard.
A cluster of people had already gathered outside a stall door. By the way they were bumping into each other and rushing around, I could see something was very wrong. There was shouting, and someone called for an ambulance. Libby shoved through the crowd, dragging me with her. Someone tried to bar our way, but Libby gave him a push and he gave up. We blundered inside the stall.
A knot of people were bent over a figure in the fresh straw.
On the other side of the stall, Emma lay flat out, her booted legs spread at a vulgar angle, her clothing dirty, her beautiful face completely blank and very white. Blood smeared her hands and jeans.
“Oh, God,” I said. “Please, no.”
I don’t remember how I reached her body, but I went down on my knees in the straw and felt for her pulse. Her head lolled away from my hand. Spike jumped out of my handbag and seized Emma’s shirt-sleeve in his teeth. He began to yank. Behind me, Libby went into hysterics.
With probing fingertips, I found a pulse in Emma’s throat. When I called her name, she did not respond. Spike let go of her sleeve and began to yap.
Inches from her hand in the straw, as if dropped when she had passed out, glittered her silver flask. Libby snatched it up. The cap was missing. The flask was empty.
“She’s not dead,” Libby prayed above me. “She’s not dead, she’s not dead.”
Farther away in the straw lay Emma’s riding crop. She had taped the handle to fit her grip, and I recognized it. The leather looked wet and dark.
Suddenly, Tim was there. He shouldered me aside and knelt in the straw, reaching competently to help my sister. He called her name and smacked her cheek with enough force to make me gasp. But I thought I saw Emma’s eyes roll back in her head. I put my hands on her shoulders and shook her. “Em!”
Over Libby’s sobbing, I heard other people arrive. Someone pulled me to my feet to give Tim room to work. A voice began talking to 911 on a cell phone, and the stall started to spin around me. The air was very hot and hard to breathe.
Thomasina Silk came over, agitated and very white. “Tim. Tim, it’s Rush Strawcutter. I think he’s dead.”
I tried to draw a breath and couldn’t.
“Tim!” Thomasina tried again. “Did you hear me? There’s blood everywhere. He’s been hit in the head. I think Rush is dead.”
Still bent over Emma, Tim said, “Then I can’t do anything for him.”
“What about Emma?” I said.
Tim looked up at me, but he seemed to telescope to a distant place. “Hold her,” he said to someone far away. “She’s fainting.”
A black wave slammed over me and I was swept away.
Chapter 3
At the hospital, the ER staff immediately whisked Emma into a treatment room. Libby and I were escorted more slowly to another cubicle, where a young nurse and a doctor with a goatee fussed over me. While they tried to determine the cause of my faint, a patient-care representative brought frequent updates on Emma’s condition. Alcohol poisoning was the most serious concern.
“They’re pumping her stomach,” was the first report.
“She’s coming around a little.”
Then, “The doctor’s with her. She’s awake and talking.”
And finally, “Your sister’s quite a handful, isn’t she?”
I felt as if I’d been hit by a truck. The weight of calamity was so heavy it made me dizzy, and I could barely sit up. Surprising the hell out of me, my sister Libby pulled herself together first and spoke firmly to my doctor.
“She faints all the time. It’s nothing new and nothing serious.”
“Any loss of consciousness is serious.”
“Not with Nora. She’s very tenderhearted. It’s all emotional. I’m emotional too, of course, but my constitution is stronger. I had a baby just a few weeks ago, and you don’t see me looking wan, do you?”
“Certainly not.”
The doctor had an earring as well as the neat goatee. He had slender hands, too, and he toyed with a Cross pen as he contemplated the state of Libby’s health. He said, “You’re vibrant.”
“Vibrant!” Libby smiled, and her hand strayed unconsciously to the upper slope of the Himalayas barely contained by her jacket. “What a charming word. You’re charming, Dr. Quartermaine.”
“And you,” he responded solemnly, “are enchanting.”
“Oh, my goodness! Look at me, I’m leaking again!” She clutched her breasts and blushed. “I can’t help myself sometimes. It’s so embarrassing, but I can’t stop the flow—”
“It’s quite natural,” the doctor said calmly, but I thought I detected a quiver in his pointed beard as he passed her a handful of tissues.
She stuffed them into her bra to stop the torrent of milk. Any minute she was going to start telling him about her personal goddess, so I said, “I’m fine, too. I don’t need coddling.”
But Libby began acting like Florence Nightingale. “Let me take care of her, Dr. Quartermaine. I know just how to settle her nerves.”
The doctor listened attentively and approved of her plan.
Libby insisted on taking me to her favorite spa.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I objected when we were alone again. “I’ll be fine in five minutes. It’s just a stupid fainting spell.”
“That handsome doctor says to get you out of here.”
“For God’s sake, stop acting like you want to play with his stethoscope. I’m not leaving Emma.”
“You can’t take care of Emma if you’re a mess yourself,” she argued. “Now, come on.”
I was woozy and in no shape to make decisions for myself, and Reed was completely bulldozed by my sister’s imperious commands, so the spa is where we ended up. Reed pitied me so much that he took charge of Spike.
At The Pink Windowbox, Libby helped me get undressed and into a plush cotton candy-colored robe. I felt like Camille when she guided me to a table behind a large potted plant in the corner of the spa’s serenely pink dining room. In minutes, Libby had the whole staff scurrying to take care of us. A pot of herb tea was rushed to our table. Libby frowned over the lunch menu and ordered me a grapefruit and a piece of broiled fish with lemon. For herself, she requested a chicken quesadilla with extra cheese and a beer. “Because I’m nursing,” she announced to the waitress.
“No kidding,” said the girl, who from her perspective had a breathtaking view of Libby’s cleavage.
“No tip,” Libby warned.
When the waitress hurried away, I said, “Libby, this is completely ridiculous. I’m not an invalid.”
“You’re as pale as paper. Besides, I can’t take care of Emma, so I’ll take ca
re of you instead. I have a motherly nature. You can’t fight instinct.”
“We should be with Emma.”
Libby poured tea for me. “Dr. Quartermaine said it would be better to come back when Emma’s fully conscious.”
I planted my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. I couldn’t even fake normalcy. “Oh, God.”
Libby softened and gave my elbow a shake. “Let’s get you healthy. Then we’ll think of a way to help Emma.”
The waitress came, and Libby received her beer with pleasure.
When we were alone again, I said, “This is very bad, Lib. Rush Strawcutter is dead, and Emma had blood all over her.”
“I know.”
Libby took a slug of her beer and glanced around the restaurant to make sure nobody could overhear us. Then she leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I spoke to Emma for just a minute in the emergency room. She doesn’t remember anything. She’d been drinking last night, and she passed out. She told me that much before the police showed up.”
I had just swallowed a sip of tea, and the mention of police made me choke on it. Libby gave me a karate chop between my shoulder blades.
“Yes, the police,” she said when I had myself under control again. “What did you expect? Rushton is dead, and it wasn’t an accident, either. He’d been hit on the head.”
“By whom?”
We looked at each other.
“No,” I said. “Even drunk, she’d never.”
Libby didn’t answer, and I wobbled to my feet. “I need a telephone.”
“What for?”
“I’ll be right back.”
When I returned from the spa lobby, I sat down at the table and pulled the pink robe closer around my shoulders. Shivering, I wrapped both hands around my teacup. I felt as if I’d barely survived an earthquake.
“Well?” Libby asked.
“I called a lawyer.” My teeth rattled against the rim of the teacup, so I put it down again. “Emma’s in a lot of trouble.”
We both sat, thinking about our little sister.
We had tried. Libby and I had both talked to her in recent weeks, to try making her see that drinking wasn’t an answer to her pain. But Emma hadn’t slowed her headlong downhill plunge long enough to listen to a single word. Mind you, we’d all three lost husbands. Libby had even buried two. It was the curse of Blackbird women. But in the two years since her husband had been killed in a car accident, Emma had tried every way she could think of to forget the man who’d been her soul mate. Lately, she’d taken to alcohol.
The only thing clear in Emma’s mind was that she didn’t want anyone’s help—not from her sisters or the various men who followed her around like fraternity boys on the trail of the campus bad girl.
“Oh, stop,” she had ordered me with disdain when I broached the subject. “I’m in control.”
She wasn’t even close.
And with history having a tendency to repeat itself, I was terrified of losing my sister as well as my own husband.
Drinking tea, I tried to imagine how we were going to get through the next few days. I needed an expert strategist to think it through.
“One of Mr. Abruzzo’s lawyers?” Libby asked.
“What?”
“You called one of Mr. Abruzzo’s mob lawyers?”
“He’s not—Yes, as a matter of fact. He’s going to the hospital now. He’ll make sure Emma is protected.”
The waitress brought our food, the sight of which made my stomach sour.
Libby began tearing apart her quesadilla. “One weird thing.”
“Yes?”
“There was a big white envelope in Rush’s hand.”
I stared at her. “What?”
Libby ravenously bit the corner off a wedge of cheese-packed tortilla. “While the paramedics checked you out, I looked at Rush. He was in the straw, just like Emma, except there was—Well, he was a mess, let me tell you. Normally, I have a tender stomach for gore, but Placida must have been with me. They hadn’t moved the body yet, and I saw it—a white envelope. Kinda squished, but I noticed it.” She licked melted cheese from her thumb.
I tried to understand what she was telling me. “What kind of envelope? You mean like the invitation? Or a Christmas card? A utility bill?”
She took a more ladylike nibble. “No, more of an oversized envelope, maybe eight-by-ten, like a smallish manila envelope, only it wasn’t manila. It was white. I noticed it because it was an unusual thing to see in a horse barn. I mean, there was Rush, dressed for fox hunting, except he had this nice white—”
“Had he gone hunting?” I asked. “Could you tell if he’d been riding?”
Libby frowned. She was an artist, and I trusted her to remember visual details. At last she shook her head. “No. He was wearing his riding clothes, but they were clean. And he was still wearing his street shoes.”
Fox hunters, we knew, rarely drove their cars wearing their best riding boots.
Emma, I recalled, hadn’t changed into her formal riding habit. She’d been wearing jeans.
I said, “Was it Rush’s blood all over Emma? Or was she cut anywhere?”
Libby shook her head. “Just her mouth and a little around her eye—not enough to cause all that blood. That doesn’t mean it was Rush’s. Don’t think negatively, Nora. It’s bad karma.”
“But it’s logical. What about her riding crop? Did you see it in the straw?”
“Yes. Nobody touched it until the police came. They took it immediately.”
I didn’t want to think about what Emma’s riding crop had been used for. “Does Emma even know Rush? Were they friends?”
Libby slid her eyes sideways at me. “Are you asking me if she was sleeping with him?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Lib—”
“Emma has a gazillion boyfriends. It’s not out of the question that she and Rush—”
“He’s married. She wouldn’t date a married man.”
“She hasn’t been herself lately. In a lot of ways.”
I pierced a tiny bite of fish with my fork but didn’t raise it to my mouth. In the center of our table, a soft candle flickered. A barely audible strain of Mozart wafted in the air. Around us, The Pink Windowbox oozed comfort and luxury. But I didn’t feel remotely relaxed. My brain was humming.
“What do you know about Rush Strawcutter?” I asked.
“Only that he married Gussie, which was odd. Nobody ever thought Gussie could snare a man. Didn’t they meet at a big dog show? I remember hearing something like that. She was there as a sponsor and he was . . . I forget. They fell in love over basset hounds, didn’t they?”
“I don’t think Gussie likes any kind of dog.”
“Oh, right, that was the joke. Their company makes dog food, but Strawcutters don’t have pets.”
“Until Rush came long. He always has—had—a few pound puppies with him. They rode around in his station wagon.”
Libby drank more beer. “I bet Gussie dumps them at the humane society before nightfall. She always struck me as the heartless type.”
“That’s a mean thing to say. Poor Gussie.”
“But what an odd couple. She’s such a schlub, but I always thought Rush had a winning quality.”
“Oh, heavens, you didn’t make a pass at him, did you?”
“He wasn’t my type. And he was married, after all.” A crumb of quesadilla tumbled down the curve of her bosom and disappeared into the bottomless crevasse. Libby glanced down and wisely decided a rescue effort was hopeless.
I tried to recall seeing Gussie and Rush together. Plenty of men had made a run at Gussie over the years, of course. With the Strawcutter fortune behind her, she was an obvious catch. Gussie rejected them all. But Rushton had gone more slowly than the others, I remembered, and somehow he’d won her over.
“They had the longest engagement on record,” Libby said. “Four years, maybe. It probably took that long to soften up Gussie. Remember?”
“
And at first he was reluctant to take a job with Strawcutter Industries, right?”
“He probably didn’t want to look like a gold digger. What’s the male equivalent of a gold digger? Well, Rush took the job, after all, so what does it matter?” Libby chowed down on her lunch.
I put my fork on my plate. No matter how he’d started at Strawcutter Industries, Rush had worked hard. He hadn’t chafed under working for his wife, either, as Gussie’s father gradually let go of the business.
Libby noticed me mulling over what I knew and suddenly looked intrigued. “Is this how you detect a murder, Nora?”
“I’m just thinking. I’m trying to imagine why Rush might have been killed. Somebody’s usually upset over a family issue or money, according to Michael.”
“Well, he would know.”
I snapped my fingers. “Lately, Rush had started up his own company. Do you know anything about it?”
“Yes, it’s a chain of pet stores and shampoo parlors.”
“Laundro-Mutt,” I said, remembering at last. “Has it been a success?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I wash my dog with a hose in the driveway.”
“Does Rushton have any partners? Anybody who might be involved in his business?”
“Just Gussie, I suppose. That is, if she loosened the family purse strings enough to invest in Rush’s idea. I hear she’s a tightwad like her father.”
Family and money, I thought. Add passion, and I had a trifecta of murder motives.
Our waitress appeared beside the table then. “Is everything all right, ladies?”
“I’d like another beer,” said Libby. “Do you have Guinness?”
The waitress painstakingly wrote down Libby’s request. “There’s someone who’d like to speak with you. I told him it’s against our policy. We try to keep a serene atmosphere in the dining room, but—”
“Who is it?” I asked, but I had already guessed.
A young man in a black trenchcoat approached our table.
I cinched my pink robe tightly around my waist. Libby sat back in her chair, however, allowing her robe to fall gently open from her bosom. She put one hand to her throat in a classic Marilyn Monroe gesture. Even her hair was lasciviously mussed.
