Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  She said impatiently, “You know what I mean! Why invite such—fuss?”

  “Fuss? Scrutiny of bad behavior, you mean. Tactfully put. I suppose it grows—goes—wi’ the job.” He pulled himself straight again. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Watching him, her curiosity sharpened. “I heard a rumor. May I run it past you for comment?”

  He flung out a palm in invitation.

  “You’ve informed your government pets: you wish to fill the upcoming vacancy, ambassador to Spain.”

  His shoulders moved, as if he’d stifled a retort.

  She sighed. “So that’s how you attracted this girl. You promised she’d be madam ambassador in her own country. I did wonder, but I never believed you’d”—she smiled painfully—“disturb your customary lifestyle with actual work.”

  “Service to my country,” he said defensively.

  “Service to your family business,” she corrected sharply. “The Institute for Air and Space Safety opening in Barcelona. Rouchard International Limited sells weapons; now you want to profit by defending against them. You want the IASS defense contracts. Her illustrious papa’s blessing would give you entrée, make you an insider at the institute.”

  “So it would. But your best chum, Bishop George, says he’ll block any petition for an annulment. Don’ know why.”

  “You know exactly why,” she said flatly.

  “I’ll expand the dynasty in grand style. Children,” he said sullenly. “Everything. Not my father’s son anymore. But me.”

  “You!” Daphne couldn’t help the astonished laughter that exploded from her.

  Joseph shrieked, “Shut up!” Suddenly he looked old and emaciated instead of slender. His scrawny neck extended, tendons like ropes, as he shouted, “Bastard knows all about me! You told him everything in those goddamned confessionals! I knew I couldn’t trust you! I can just see you, jabbering away like two little girls!”

  Daphne demanded shrilly, “And you learned this how! You threatened him?”

  “He threatened me!” He flung his cigarette aside.

  He strode forward and grabbing Daphne by her shoulders swung her around. Now the light was in her eyes. He towered over her. She struggled, thrust her arms between his, trying to break his grip. He hustled her backward, both of them stumbling. In seconds, they burst through the French doors onto the terrace, splinters and glass exploding into the night. Their feet tangled in her long skirt, and both fell heavily amid the shower of glass to the stone floor. Blood oozed from tiny cuts on their necks and arms.

  She squirmed frantically to get out from under him.

  “This is going to be easier than I thought,” he snarled. He pushed his groin into her. “Oh, my, maybe I should fuck you first. Keep struggling, I don’t often get a hard-on like this….”

  Her bloody wrist slipped from his grip, and she struck his face hard. The blow made him pause.

  She said in an enraged hiss, “You’ll never get away with it!”

  “I won’t? You must’ve learned by now, people like me get away with just about everything. Did any of my young friends complain?”

  “You crippled Peter; that scared the rest! But I’m not scared.” She flailed at his face. “I have powerful friends! They know you! They’ll figure it out!” She beat at him, but his body kept her pinned.

  “You mean my friends? You think they’d finger me? For you?” He laughed. “You’re not one of us. Poor Daphne, fooling herself all these years that she ‘belongs.’ She loves everyone, but nobody loves her back.”

  She gasped and went limp. “You’re wrong! After all these years—”

  “Years of writing sickly anecdotes instead of exposing the nasty bits. You think you’ve won their affections?”

  “They’re good to me!”

  “Like their cocker spaniel. Pats and yum-yums for Darling Daphne, who loved them unconditionally. And protected them when they needed it, in print.” He paused, as if considering something. “Yes. Exactly like a dog.”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks. “They do love me!”

  “Darling, people like me don’t befriend people like you. Not when it counts. We use you.”

  “NO!” She heaved against him. They rolled, and she managed to pull herself to a sitting position, pushing him back.

  “Poor Daphne,” he crooned at her, head lolling carelessly in the crunching glass. “She cares so much.” He laughed again, his voice high and drunk.

  “Stop it!” she shouted. She swung at his face, catching only his ear.

  He lifted a leg and kicked her, knocking her sideways. For a few more seconds, they grappled, but he managed to stand. He hauled her up with him. Despite the chill air, he was sweating heavily.

  He used his body weight to slam her against the parapet edging the terrace. He bent her backward over the thicket of dormant ivy stems, grinding her against them. He pushed her farther and farther backward, over the rounded top. Her breathing, ragged and desperate, made misty clouds illuminated by the streetlights. Traffic sounds drifted up from the street below.

  Grinning, teeth bared, he said, “Oopsy daisy, over you go.” He grunted with effort as he bent to get an arm under her legs. “Tragic, they’ll say.” He huffed. “Jealousy drove you to it. You do envy us, Daphne.” He lifted, and now her feet dangled over the edge, skirts flaring gracefully in the breeze. She sobbed, scrabbled desperately at the ivy, the bricks. Suddenly she pulled a brick loose.

  She slammed it against the side of his head. He staggered backward, dragging her off the parapet. She dropped out of his arms as they hit the terrace floor hard. Pulling back both legs, arching her feet, she kicked his knees with the spikes of her heels.

  He gave a sharp cry and collapsed backward. They lay apart for a moment in the darkness, both panting, neither moving.

  Finally, she pulled herself up and crawled to his side. She leaned over him and, gulping air, felt for a pulse at his neck. “Joseph?” she whispered.

  His eyelids lifted. He looked at her, poised above him. He smiled faintly. “You’re a fool.”

  “You’re wrong!”

  He groaned, then weakly crooned, “Nobody cares about Daphne.” He chuckled.

  She lifted the brick with both hands and slammed it once, twice, again… into the dark red pulp that had once been a face.

  Daphne stopped. She dropped the brick and crossed herself. Over and over she crossed herself.

  MOMENTS LATER, DAPHNE scrambled to her feet. She ran to the intercom by the door, pressed a button, and cried, “Max! Come upstairs!” She waited, trembling, until an eon later, she heard a knock.

  Max Kovalevski, her doorman, burst through the door when she opened it. “Miss March!” He stared at her, aghast. “Wha—what happened! Are you all right?” Max was a short, powerfully built Russian man in his fifties who liked the night shift, which meant that due to her late hours, he saw more of Daphne March than many of her neighbors. He’d worked in the building almost as long as Daphne had lived there, twenty years.

  “Is that blood?”

  She looked down at her torn, bloody hands and ruined gown as if surprised at their condition. Instead of answering, she turned and led him into the apartment. As they passed through the living room, he bent to scoop a smoldering cigarette from the carpet. The air was foul with the smell of charred wool.

  Max followed her through the terrace doors, which hung crooked and smashed. She stopped and faced him.

  “What the hell?” He stepped gingerly over the litter of glass to see deeper into the shadows. His mouth opened wordlessly as he scanned the scene, the body. The cigarette in his fingers continued sending up spirals of smoke until Daphne snatched it and flung it over the parapet. Max twisted to look at her.

  “Is that…?”

  Daphne’s eyes were wild and huge, glistening in the dark. “He tried to kill me.”

  “Kill you?” Max wrapped his thick arms tight across his chest. “Kill you!” He shivered. After a long pause he said, “I�
��I could take him downstairs before I call the cops. I’ll tell ’em he got here, I mean the lobby, like that. Said he was looking for you.”

  “How could he go anywhere in that condition? How could he talk?”

  He exhaled. “Right. Right.” He scrubbed a calloused palm across his mouth. “I’ll say—I’ll say I told him to get out, wouldn’t let him in, too drunk.”

  Daphne stared. “You knew he was drunk?”

  Max looked away, blinking rapidly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Miss March.” He continued miserably, “I’ll say, I told him to get out and refused to get him a cab. Told him get his own cab. And that’s the last I saw ’im. ’Til I found him out back by the trash when I took my one a.m. break.” He glanced at his watch. “Twelve fifteen now. You should get yourself to the Hamptons, Miss March. Like as if you’d gone earlier.” He swallowed. “As if you wasn’t here when he came. Any luck, nobody’ll look up here.”

  Daphne dropped her eyes. Nodded. She said sadly, “We’ll see how it goes.”

  “This—this’ll take me a while. I’ll get rid of—” He groped for a word, failed. “Clean up,” he finished.

  She followed him back to the front door.

  Max paused before he passed through to the hall. “They’d believe he’d come to you for help. Everybody knows his, uh, reputation. And that you never hold a grudge.”

  She looked at him with a blank expression, as if unable to take in his words. In her mind, she heard: Poor Daphne, loves everyone.

  While Max took away Joseph’s body and hung a blanket across the broken doors, Daphne showered and dressed.

  She went to a small room off the kitchen, unlocked the door, switched on the lights, then traced a finger along the labels of file cabinets that filled one wall. She found the drawer she wanted, pulled out a manila envelope fat with photos and papers and tattered with age. She relocked the door, went to the table in the foyer, and slid the envelope into a drawer. Then she left her apartment by the back stairs.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, Alice Winchester shifted a few crucial inches in her chair, effectively cutting off a bellowed monologue from a ruddy-complexioned man on her right, whose donation of Communist Chinese photography to the Museum of Modern Art was being celebrated tonight. She leaned closer to the young man on her left. She whispered, “Forgive me for neglecting you—” She waved a hand to express duties owed to the guest of honor at her own party, who sat blinking, taken aback at his sudden loss of audience. “Did you get the brand of scotch you prefer? Do you need a refill?”

  He whispered back, “Yes, thank you, and no, thank you. You’re more attentive than I deserve.” Straightening, he stated loud enough to be overheard by several guests, “Mr. Baughlander’s stories are mesmerizing!” He beamed at the elderly, confused man.

  Alice giggled. “It’s all right, Wayne wouldn’t hear a cannon go off in his ear. His wife’s my greatest friend. She’ll tell him what you said. He’ll be happy; he believes anything complimentary about himself.” Alice was a redhead, forty years Cory’s senior. Remnants of her once-striking beauty had been preserved by surgery and the cut of her Dior dinner gown. She settled more cozily in his direction.

  “What sweet eyes you have.” She tapped the back of his hand with two fingers. “As if you’d never seen a shocking thing in your life. But if you’re a friend of Daphne’s—which you must be, since you’re her ‘plus one’—that can’t be true. Who are you, darling?”

  “Cory Sandhurst,” he replied. He put down his dessert fork with relief, released by the etiquette of conversation from eating the rest of his plum tart. He hated pastry, but he knew Mrs. Winchester’s private chef, Edie, would soon be called out from the kitchen for bows and applause. Mrs. Winchester required enthusiasm for Edie’s skills from guests who desired return invitations to her monthly dinner parties, and Cory desperately wanted to return.

  He hesitated, then said, “Wonderful room. Grander than I’d imagined. I’m thrilled to get a chance to see Stan Renard’s work. The choice of details, your walls liquid with color. The curtains. Perfect setting for the Monet lilies.”

  Alice listened, a faintly puzzled looked on her face.

  “I was at school with your grandson, Bret.” As per Daphne’s script, although the statement was true.

  “With my Bretsy?” cooed Alice, delighted.

  “Yes.” He recalled how Bret cringed at his grandmother’s pet name.

  “You’re not—” She hesitated, brow furrowed. “Not the son of Astrid Lenoire Sandhurst?”

  He nodded.

  “And your father—John Sandhurst, the banker? My God! I know you!” she cried. “Your mother’s a genius; we saw a placement of hers in a Berlin museum. You have her eyes; I knew I’d seen them before! God, you’re such a hunk, as we elders used to say. Still say, obviously!” She laughed, and Cory leaned back in his chair. The move drew Alice closer. Daphne had told him about that.

  “But—how do you know our darling Daphne?”

  “We met through PEN.”

  Alice continued, “We always say that, you know. ‘Darling Daphne.’ She is so dear. She says only the nicest things about us in her columns.”

  Daphne had kept an eye on him all evening. He’d been trying not to look at her but hadn’t been able to prevent an occasional glance her way, like a nervous tic. He looked again. She’d pushed her chair back from the table and sat, legs crossed, one leg exposed by the slit in her narrow skirt, rolling a frosted glass of champagne against one cheek, as if she liked its coolness against her skin. Not drinking it. One drink per night was all she allowed herself, she’d said, and she’d shared that with him in her office prior to tonight’s dinner.

  Daphne was seated at the second of Alice’s three round tables, each of which seated eight. He stared, helpless to look away. Despite the uncomfortable eighteenth-century French chairs, she radiated an air of reveling in her surroundings, of glorious enjoyment of the evening and her companions. A blonde goddess in pearl lace, she’d thrown her head back to laugh, exposing her creamy throat.

  “Look at her,” he found himself saying. “She belongs here.”

  “She’s allowed here,” corrected Alice. She smiled up at him, for he was tall, and she was a petite woman. “You don’t see any other press here, do you?”

  Suddenly Daphne shot Cory a droll wink, then turned to speak to someone.

  For a second he forgot to breathe, feeling his heart jump into his throat. We’re off, he thought.

  Alice continued, “PEN. That’s the literary organization. You’re a writer?”

  He nodded, swallowing hard. “A journalist. Press, like Daphne.” He plucked a full wineglass from the table, disregarding whose it was. Daphne had explained to him that a full glass in a journalist’s hand, in place of the alarming microrecorder or notebook, psychologically freed people to talk.

  “Oh, but not press press, you’re one of us!”

  Cory said, puzzled, “Us?” His eyes lifted to scan the room.

  Alice frowned slightly. “Your parents, dear. Two of our best families.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m good goods. Daphne brushed me up. Mother opted out of society somewhat thoroughly when she left my father.”

  Alice chuckled. “The privilege of artistic genius. You escorted none of the debutantes when you were younger, either; I would’ve remembered. You heard about Jojo, of course?”

  He blinked. “Jojo? No… oh, Joseph Rouchard. Daphne’s ex, yes. Terrible.”

  Alice shuddered. “He was at Le Bal Crillon in Paris this winter. Where he met his fiancée. Stunning, and I don’t mean her inheritance. What was Jojo, practically sixty? She couldn’t have been more than twenty! Came out with the Josselen girls; he was there to escort their poor widowed mother, Lula Winter-Josselen, for God’s sake! More his age, but you know these empire builders and their arm candy. I’d be less shocked if he just, well, you know. But he intended to marry that child! Well, why I bore you with this… Oh, yes. The subject was society. Your father is on
the board of my foundation.” Her eyes narrowed.

  “My mother supports my choice of career,” he said, knowing he was answering several questions at once.

  “Male writers embody danger and romance to my mind—Hemingway, Miller, Fitzgerald.” Alice sighed, fanning her face mockingly with her napkin. “You’re not seeing Daphne romantically, are you? Her name hasn’t been linked with a man’s since—”

  He cleared his throat. “She’s retiring, have you heard? To write her memoirs.”

  She chattered on as if she hadn’t heard his interruption, touching his hand again. “I’m giving darling Daphne’s birthday party soon, at Dianna’s Cafe. You’ll come, won’t you? It’s an annual event. I vary the guest list each year. One hundred is really only fifty, you know”—her speech slowed—“and she knows just everyone….” She stopped.

  He forged ahead. “The column published on that Friday, the day of your party, will be her farewell to her reading public.”

  Alice stared at him.

  Cory repeated, “On her fiftieth birthday in two weeks, she retires. Friday, at your party. April first.” Journalists repeat key lines. Good journalists, anyway.

  Alice’s fingers curled into claws. He felt her nails unintentionally gouging into his skin. He waited, expression pleasantly expectant.

  One of his best traits, Daphne had said during his job interview. His emotions stayed hidden always. His father had railed for years, accusing him of having no warmth, no feelings for others. He did. Just not—outwardly. He wished his father could’ve heard Daphne explaining it. Until she had, he’d believed himself a selfish, cold fish. His father’s term.

  Daphne said his feelings were so overly empathic, he’d learned early to hide them in self-protection. She asked if his father had been emotionally abusive. Then, eyes soft, she told him not to answer. Daphne reminded Cory of his mother, who’d done her best to protect him from his father.

  “People confide in you, don’t they,” Daphne had said, not a question. “Because they sense that you care. So few people care. Are you sure you want this job?”

  Cory’s mind returned to the present. “She leaves for Maine the morning after the party. Her apartment’s already on the market.”