by Nancy Martin
His face lit up behind Harry Potter-style glasses. “Oh, hi! I’m Andy Mooney. Hey, it’s awesome to meet you! I’ve read about your family in the papers for years. You’re real Philadelphia royalty, aren’t you?”
“Shut up, Andrew.”
“Sorry, Miss Keough. I’ve grooved on your column for so long, though, I feel like I’ve memorized all your good stuff. That piece you did on Mr. Charles Blackbird’s funeral was really great.”
I said, “My grandfather’s funeral was fifteen years ago, Andy. How old were you then?
“Oh, my mother keeps a scrapbook. She read the clippings to me when I was little, and I got hooked. I still remember the way Miss Keough described the hundreds of people from all walks of life who went to the funeral to pay their respects to Charlie Blackbird. She said—”
Kitty interrupted. “Yeah, well, give people what they want, and they’ll come out in droves.”
I remembered my vow to behave with the utmost civility when in Kitty’s presence. “It’s lovely to meet you, Andy. Are you working with us now?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s a major dream come true. I’m just an intern at the moment, but Miss Keough said I can work my way up to your job, Miss Blackbird.”
“How do you like the sound of that, Sweet Knees?”
Kitty’s silver dress was one I’d seen on her before, and she looked like a war horse strapped into its harness. She was headed for a fancy dress party, and I guessed it was the annual Children’s Hospital Holiday Ball. I’d heard by way of a friend on the organizing committee that the guest host—a very popular television comedian who promoted children’s charities when he wasn’t playing the bumbling father of oversexed teenagers—had doubled the ticket sales this year. I made a mental note to slip that information to Stan if Kitty didn’t learn it at the ball. Stan could ease it into her column before it went to press, and Kitty would be none the wiser where the detail came from.
I said, “It’s wonderful to have extra help during the holidays.”
“Yeah, we’re swamped,” Kitty agreed, turning on Stan. “In fact, I want Sweet Knees to go to a few more parties. The invitations are coming in so fast, I can’t keep up.”
“That’s exactly what Nora’s for,” Stan said. “To take up the slack for you, Kitty.”
“Okay, then, she can go through the invitations, and Andrew can come along with me tonight.”
Stan’s patience was thin. “We don’t have the money in the budget to pay your intern to—”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Andy piped up. “I don’t need to be paid to help Miss Keough.”
“Great,” Stan said quickly. “Then everybody’s happy. Nora, you’ll take a look at Kitty’s invitations before you leave today?”
“Of course.”
“And, Kitty, you’re coming back in tonight to finish this week’s column?”
She had already snatched up her ancient fur coat and was sailing out the door. “Don’t worry about me, Stan.”
Spike chose that moment to poke his head out of my bag and issue a big puppy burp. Then he snarled at Andy. For once, he was picking on something his own size. With a startled expression, Andy skipped after Kitty.
“Hang on a minute, Nora.” Stan waved me back into his office.
“Sorry about the dog, Stan. I won’t bring him again.”
“Don’t worry about it. I love dogs.” Then he did a double take. “Even one that ugly. Tell me what you saw at the hunt breakfast. The boys downstairs are working on the story now. I hear some young millionaire got himself killed.”
I sat down in the chair opposite Stan’s desk. I liked Stan. He worked hard and was loyal to the newspaper that paid him poorly for doing more than his fair share of work and taking a lot of abuse from maniacs like Kitty. He was an old-fashioned newsman who always met his deadlines at the expense of his tender stomach. At first I hadn’t understood why he stayed with the Intelligencer, but after a few months I caught on to his unrequited affection for a certain fifty-something copy editor who thought he was invisible. For me, his smile was always tired, but it was genuine.
I told him what I knew about Rushton Strawcutter’s death.
“And your sister,” Stan prompted when I had finished without mentioning Emma’s trip to the hospital and the police presence outside her room there. “Sorry, but I heard her name mentioned.”
“My sister isn’t involved in the murder,” I said more calmly than I felt. “But the police are obligated to pursue all possible leads.”
Stan smiled grimly. “You sound like a press release.”
“Can you blame me?”
“No, but I hope you won’t blame me for doing my job either. Mind if I call downstairs and ask if anyone wants to talk to you?”
I didn’t want to talk to reporters, not even ones who were my friends. But it was naïve to hope the press was going to ignore Emma. I preferred to have some control over what was printed about her.
“Go ahead,” I told Stan.
He reached for his phone to make arrangements.
A few minutes later, Mary Jude was pleased to see the team from the news department get off the elevator.
“Perfect,” she said. “You guys can have these cookies if you tell me which ones you like best and why.”
The three of them dug into Mary Jude’s supply while asking me questions about what I had seen at the hunt breakfast. I tried to be honest but diplomatic, and I asked that I not be named as a source of their information. They agreed and quickly put the finishing touches on the story they’d spent the afternoon assembling.
Before they got up to leave, I asked if they were working on the story of Tottie Boarman’s recent trouble.
“That’s the business desk,” Freddie told me, scratching his eyebrow with his pen. “Check with Marcy Edelstein. She’s working that story. I just saw Boarman downstairs, though.”
“Downstairs?” I repeated. “Tottie Boarman was here at the Intelligencer?”
“Well, only to pick up his date. His car came up to the curb when I went out for a smoke.”
“His date?”
Freddie laughed. “Yeah, it was pretty funny, actually. Kitty went out with a kid on her heels, the both of them dressed like they were headed for a Mardi Gras party. When is she going to give that fur coat a decent burial? Boarman was pretty annoyed. I don’t know if he was grossed out by their clothes or mad that Kitty had brought along a midget for a chaperone, but he was definitely peeved.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean Kitty got into Tottie’s car?”
“Sure. And the kid climbed into the front seat with the driver.”
Mary Jude laughed. “Well, that explains why Boarman’s gotten so many inches in Kitty’s social columns lately.”
Kitty and Tottie? I couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d heard Joan Rivers had started dating Alan Greenspan.
I said, “Surely they’re not seeing each other.”
“Weirder couples have happened,” Freddie said, looking at me.
A short silence slipped past as the four journalists waited for me to say something about my own dating habits.
Before I found myself contributing to a news story about money laundering, Spike poked his head out and announced his low opinion of people who didn’t share their cookies. I shoved him down into my bag and stood up. “I like the cookies with the green sprinkles best, Mary Jude. They’re not so sweet that my teeth hurt, and they’re thin enough that I can have a few and still fit into my dress this Friday night.”
The others voted on their favorite cookie, too, and left Mary Jude to work on her story. I made my way through the labyrinth of reporters’ desks until I found Kitty’s. She had commandeered some portable walls to create a cubicle for herself, so I stepped into her improvised office. A mountain of invitations lay in piles on the surface of her desk. I sat down in her chair to go through the envelopes.
Balls, dinners, cocktail parties, teas. Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve. Kitty ha
d already put aside the events she wanted me to attend. I flipped through a hundred invitations. No way could I attend them all. I sorted them by category. The host organizations ran from garden clubs and genuinely wonderful charitable organizations to the Sky Waiters, an earnest group of people who claimed they’d all been abducted and harassed by aliens. I wondered wryly who else was on their guest list. There was also a lovely card from an outdoorsman’s club that liked to pretend it was not a front for the NRA. I was sure Kitty had given me at least half the invitations as a form of punishment.
Nearly all the cards required RSVP, which I would have to take care of quickly. I also realized I had been personally invited to more than half the events represented by Kitty’s pile of invitations.
There was no way I could attend a fraction of those parties, of course. Certainly not now that Emma was in trouble.
I gathered up the stack of cards to take home and realized they wouldn’t survive ten minutes in my bag with Spike. So I opened one of Kitty’s desk drawers in search of something to carry all the invitations in.
There, on the top of a very cluttered drawer, lay a stack of oversized white envelopes. Eight-by-ten, just the size Libby had described seeing beside Rush Strawcutter’s dead body.
I pulled out one of the envelopes and looked at it for a long time.
Spike squirmed his head out of my bag and nudged my arm.
“I don’t know what this means,” I said to the puppy.
I put the invitations into one of the white envelopes and took them all home. I needed time to think about what I’d learned, and I knew just the place to do that.
Chapter 6
I hadn’t been home to Blackbird Farm in ages, and I got a ridiculous lump in my throat when Reed dropped me at the back door.
The lump evaporated when Spike dashed inside and promptly peed on the kitchen rug. The rug was already wet, thanks to a mysterious puddle of water that had appeared in the kitchen during my absence.
I sent Spike outside again to think about his transgression while I piled my mail on the kitchen table, threw the sopping rug into the scullery sink, swept the puddle out the door and turned up the thermostat. By the time Spike came tearing inside again, the house was warming up and my answering machine was spewing recorded phone messages.
One message was from Thomasina Silk, who assured me she had taken care of Mr. Twinkles, Emma’s horse. He was stabled at Tri-County until Emma came to claim him. Boarding fees were $40 per day.
Hadley Pinkham said, “Kitten, I can’t believe I missed you in all the ruckus today. Do call when you get a chance so we can rehash.”
The last message was from Libby.
“You’re not here, so I assume you stopped by your house. I just phoned the hospital—let’s see, it’s about seven o’clock—and the doctors say we can see Emma first thing in the morning. She’s being a pain in the butt—no surprise. Want me to come pick you up? I’ll be there around eight. No, make that nine. I might want to, uh, sleep a little late. I think I’ll go to bed early, in fact, so don’t call me. I need some time to regenerate my primal energy. The kids are fine, in case you were wondering. They assume you’ll be back tomorrow. You will, won’t you?”
I put the kettle on, gave Spike some puppy chow and telephoned the hospital myself. I was connected to the nursing station on the floor where Emma had been moved.
The nurse told me Emma was sleeping, and by her tone I gathered everyone was relieved that my sister was unconscious. I hung up feeling moderately relieved that Emma was okay.
The phone rang in my hand then, and I answered.
“Nora, honey!” shouted a female voice. “It’s Delilah Fairweather! Can you hear me, or is the music too loud?”
I could hear the thump of a hip-hop beat behind her and immediately imagined my friend Delilah in her usual posture: dancing in the middle of a party with one long-nailed finger plugging her left ear while she clutched her cell phone to the other. The party girl with a Nokia; that was Delilah, who had given up a dull job as a computer programmer at age twenty-five to follow her dream. Since starting her own public relations firm, she was free to party at all hours of the day and night, and now she was in high demand as the city’s hardest working publicist and event planner. Gorgeous, with butterscotchy skin and Tina Turner legs she showed off by wearing the shortest possible skirts, Delilah also had a contagious laugh and a legendary Rolodex to match her boundless energy—a combo that rocketed her to the top of her field.
“Hey, girlfriend,” I called. “Where are you hanging tonight?”
“A new club on South Street. Come on down, honey, we’re having a blast!”
“You could have a blast in a phone booth,” I shot back.
“You got that right!” She howled, and I heard a chorus of voices howl with her. Then she said, “Down to business, babycakes. The fashion show for the Prom Fairy was a smash hit.”
“Great!” I was pleased to hear that the organization recently created to collect fancy dresses to send to needy teenagers during prom season had gotten off to a good start. “Did you collect a lot of dresses?”
“Dozens—and real money, too. It was a hit fund-raiser. My master stroke was mixing the vintage clothes with that new designer from Yardley—you’d love him, honey. So anyway, thanks for loaning me that gorgeous Mainbocher from your granny’s closet. I put it out on a mannequin at the entrance, put a spotlight on it, and it really set the stage for the whole night. Very classy.”
“Did the old thing survive?”
“Oh, honey, we took good care of your dress, and nobody dared wear it. It’s too delicate.”
“Grandmama Blackbird wore it a lot. It’s just worn out, I’m afraid.”
“But still amazing. Anyway, I have it all boxed up and ready to go home.”
“Keep it handy,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you Tuesday night.”
“Oh, you’re coming to the thing? Perfect. I’ll have it with me, then. It really was the hit of the fashion show, Nora. Oh, and somebody even wanted to buy it.”
“Sorry, not for sale.”
“I figured.” The music changed behind her, and she said, “I hear you were at that nasty hunt breakfast yesterday. I knew I hated big animals for a reason.”
“It wasn’t the animals that made it horrible.”
“So I hear. You okay, honey? Is your sister in a shitload of trouble?”
“Not for long, I hope.”
“Poor Rush. I knew him way back when, y’know. Sweet guy.”
“How did you meet him?”
“We took some college classes together. No Ivy League for us, of course, just state university on scholarships. Poor Rush was a washout. He had some kind of dyslexia, so I helped him study, and he helped me out when I needed an extra man for a party. Girl, I was party central! I liked doing the networking thing even then.” She didn’t need to explain that she probably knew more people in the city than the mayor did and threw much nicer parties. She added, “I introduced Rush to Claudine Paltron, in fact—which I’m still kicking myself about. It happened early in my career, before I knew how to handle misguided sexual attraction.”
“Misguided? On whose side?”
“Claudine’s, of course. I could tell you tales!”
I had forgotten that Delilah had counted Claudine among her clients when she first got started as a publicist. Claudine would have been a trial by fire for any PR person, but Delilah managed to control the self-centered dancer’s public persona very well. Claudine’s adoring fans stopped hearing about her many affairs and started reading about her charitable work on behalf of lupus and young dancers from underserved neighborhoods.
“And you introduced Claudine and Rush?”
“Long before he met Gussie, I swear. When I first got into the publicity gig, I snagged a lot of my college buddies as extra men. What can I say? You can never have too many handsome guys at events. And I dragged Claudine to a greyhound adoption rally he organized—a dud, actually, but it
was his first attempt, and he really believed in the cause. I thought maybe Claudine would look good with a couple of grey-hounds by her side—kinda white-bread Josephine Baker, you know? Turned out she hated dogs. But she met Rush and that was a different story.”
I hadn’t remembered that Rush and Claudine had been seen together before Rush’s marriage. “Fireworks?”
“More like a train wreck. You know how Claudine wants everything she sees? I swear it’s because she had to starve herself all those years dancing.”
“How long did it last between them?”
“I don’t know. It sort of petered out gradually. He was good for her, but Claudine got tired of all those little mutts he had with him all the time. Anyway, it turned out okay. They broke up and he married nice, safe Gussie. Except who’da thought he’d die so young?”
Or so violently, I almost said.
“So, honey, am I going to see you at the ballet gala on Friday night?”
“I think so,” I said. “If I can figure out something to wear.”
“Nobody does vintage like you, Nora. You’ll outclass us all.”
Delilah’s call waiting clicked, which was always the way conversation ended with her. Her business thrived because of her ability to field dozens of phone calls every hour.
“Gotta boogie, honey. See you at the gala!”
I thought about what Delilah had told me as I put a Lean Cuisine into the microwave. The rest of the kitchen was strictly ancient history. My parents had done few repairs and fewer upgrades to the estate, but when I moved to the farm more than a year ago, I’d brought a few essentials from my condo in the city. While my dinner hummed, I went through the stack of mail that had piled up during my stay with Libby and her family.
Spike leaped into my lap and helped by shredding a Williams-Sonoma catalog. I flipped the rest of the catalogs directly into the trash and created a pile of envelopes on the table. Mostly they were invitations and bills, plus a postcard from Kennedy Airport from Michael.
On the back he had written, “I miss you already.”
