Too Damn Rich

by Gould, Judith

  Quick thinking—namely an SOS call to the local liquor store, which was in the process of closing, and promises of a huge tip, a humongous tip—had resulted in first aid in the form of three chilled bottles of Korbel and a one-liter bottle of Campari to be delivered forthwith.

  "Oh, Kenzie," Zandra had wailed. "Honestly, darling, it's a total waste of money."

  "Let me be the judge of that, will you?"

  "But I can't eat or drink a thing, and nothing on earth will cheer me up. Things are too, too serious. If you care about me at all, you'll just go to bed and leave me be."

  "Not before you get your prescribed dose of Dr. Turner's Specially Patented Medicine Show Tonic and Cure-Ail," said Kenzie staunchly, tossing a few more logs on the fire and getting comfy.

  She regarded her friend with concern. Poor sweet Zandra. Whatever was the matter, one thing was for certain—this was no time to desert her. Misery needed company. Clearly, some serious drinking was called for.

  After all, Kenzie told herself, it was like lancing a boil. Sometimes the accumulated poisons needed to be punctured and drained, or else they could become septic and prove fatal. Twelve-step programs aside, everyone knew that some emergencies simply required a good stiff drink.

  "Just one little sip," Kenzie had cajoled, "just one teensy little swallow."

  And sure enough, one sip had led to another, and then another, and before long Zandra's tongue had loosened and the poisons came spilling out.

  "Well, now that everything's out in the open, it's time to forget the bad," Kenzie advised, refilling their glasses and going extra heavy on the Campari. "That's water under the bridge. It's time to ac-cen-tu-ate the positive. Time to look on the bright side of things."

  "The ... bright side?" Zandra echoed suspiciously. "What bright side?"

  "Well, there's always your prince."

  "Heinzie?" gloomed Zandra, chin cupped in one hand. She tapped her cheeks in quick-time with her fingers.

  "Now, now. Don't give me that look. Admit it, Zandra. He's definitely the catch of the year."

  "Especially," brooded Zandra, "for someone who's not ready for marriage." She took a long pull on her drink and shuddered. "Goodness. Kenzie, since when are we drinking Campari straight?"

  "Here." Kenzie grabbed the neck of the champagne bottle and tilted it over Zandra's glass. "That should do it."

  "Now where were we?"

  "On the bright side," Kenzie said.

  "Right. Is it any wonder, darling, that we haven't made a bit of headway? What in heavens could we have missed?"

  "Why, the ... the bundle of joy, of course! Your own wonderful, precious, darling little precocious Serene Highness of a baby!"

  "Please," Zandra begged weakly. "Don't remind me."

  "Of what? Motherhood?"

  "Darling! Did you have to say it?"

  "But it's wonderful!"

  "No, Kenzie, it's not. Motherhood means morning sickness. Motherhood means stretch marks."

  "Both of which go away."

  "And, motherhood means diapers. Bottles. Formula and rashes, colic and tantrums—"

  "For God's sake, Zandra! You'll have a whole army of trained nannies who'll worry about all that!"

  "Oh." Zandra abruptly brightened. "Why, yes. I suppose I will . . ."

  "And just think. While the rest of us gals are beating the bushes for husbands, you'll be floating down the aisle, without even having had to find a man! Wait till word hits Burghley's about this! The girls in The Club'll be scratching your eyes out!"

  "Those twits," Zandra said, with disdain.

  "Still, you have to admit you'll make a lovely bride."

  "Hmm," Zandra said dreamily. "Yes, I suppose I will. Speaking of which, I shall be able to count on you, shan't I, darling?"

  "Of course. I'll be beside you every step of the way."

  "Oh, good. Then you will be my maid of honor?"

  Kenzie stared at her. "But ... Zandra! What about Dina?"

  "What about her?" said Zandra darkly.

  "Well, won't she feel snubbed?"

  "Dina deserves to be snubbed," Zandra decided. "She can be an attendant. For that matter, Becky can, too."

  Zandra giggled for the first time in days.

  "As a matter of fact, between Heinzie's friends and relatives, and mine, I'll have the oldest bunch of bridesmatrons ever seen at a wedding. And, if I were truly mean and horrible—"

  "Zandra ..."

  "—I'd insist they wear the most ghastly dresses in ... in something like lime green! Or perhaps puce? Which do you think's worse?"

  "You wouldn't!" said Kenzie, awed.

  "Don't tempt me, darling. It would serve them right, don't you think?"

  "Yes, but... wouldn't that be rather like using Christmas as a means of punishment?"

  "Darling, where have you been? Christmas is punishment. Ask anybody. So are weddings."

  "C'mon, Zandra. Don't be such a spoilsport. Weddings are fun. And who knows? I might even catch the bridal bouquet."

  "Did I hear you say bouquet, singular? You, Kenzie? Darling, I'm afraid that at the rate you're going, you'd have to catch two."

  "Now, now, we'll have none of that. We're ac-cen-tu-at-ing the positive. Remember?"

  She smiled at Zandra and sighed blissfully.

  "A princess. You'll be a real life, honest-to-goodness fairy-tale princess, after all! A von und zu Engelwiesen."

  "Shit," said Zandra softly.

  "What now?"

  "I just remembered. Along with weddings and births come ... funerals."

  "So? Zandra, what have funerals got to do with weddings?"

  "For a von und zu Engelwiesen, everything, darling. Everything."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as, one is buried in three different locations. Did you know that?"

  "Three ... ? I ... I don't understand. Educate me, please."

  "All right. Let me see. One's embalmed body goes into a special mausoleum in the crypt of Augsburg Cathedral."

  "And what's so bad about that?"

  "But one's heart," Zandra went on, "is pickled in some sort of brine or other, then placed in a sealed vessel of some sort, and entombed in the crypt under the chapel at Schloss Engelwiesen."

  "You said there were three locations?"

  "I'm getting to that. The liver ... or is it one's bladder or spleen or appendix?—I forget which—is taken to some remote little Bavarian church to which, if you can believe it, people actually make pilgrimages, since it's supposedly famous for its miraculous cures." Zandra shuddered. "Admit it. It's really the most awfully ghoulish tradition."

  "Well, at least you're young. Death is still a long way off. Zandra, you have your whole life ahead of you."

  "Life! As a von und zu Englewiesett? Don't make me laugh. Kenzie, darling, von und zu Engelwiesens don't have lives."

  "Oh? Then what do they have?"

  "Duties, darling. Von und zu Engelwiesens have duties."

  Becky, seated on a goose-stuffed sofa piled with gaufraged cushions of brown silk velvet luxury, said: "Cherie, I thought you should be the first to know. Heinzie and I had dejeuner together."

  It was early afternoon of the following day, and she and Dina were in the Salon des Cuirs of Becky's Fifth Avenue penthouse. The painted Cordovan leather panels which gave the room its name, and which looked like splendid figural tapestries, had been attributed—depending upon which expert's opinion was to be believed—either to Govaert Flinck, a student of Rembrandt's, or else to the great master Van Rijn himself.

  "And?" Dina, delicate cup of Calvados-flavored apple tea raised to her lips, looked breathlessly over the gilt rim. "Do tell! What transpired?"

  "Voila. It is done," replied Becky, Mona Lisa smile in place. "He and Zandra are engaged to be married."

  "No!" Dina put down her cup with a clatter and sat forward. "Truly?"

  "Mais oui." Becky nodded serenely and sipped tea. "It is a fact."

  "But ... I don't understand! When did all
this occur?"

  "According to Heinzie, yesterday. Apparently Zandra went to see him."

  "Oh?" Dina was smarting. She could hear Becky's voice saying something, but the words flowed past her like a rippling stream, and did not register. All she could think of was how embarrassed and—yes, hurt— she felt.

  She thought: After all I've done for her, Zandra didn't even have the decency to call me. If she didn't want to tell me beforehand, she could at least have told me about it afterward.

  But apparently even that had been too much to expect.

  I have to hear it from a third party! God, the humiliation!

  Then she became aware of Becky's voice. "Cherie? Cherie, are you quite all right?"

  Dina pulled herself together and nodded. "Yes," she lied. "Of course."

  "I take it you have not yet spoken to Zandra?"

  "No, not yet."

  "C'est dommage. I do hope she doesn't hold our petite intrigue against you."

  "She won't," Dina said with more certainty than she felt. "She'll come around ..."

  She lifted her teacup with trembling fingers and sipped.

  "I just don't understand it. Zandra was so dead set against marrying Heinzie. What could possibly have changed her mind?"

  "Je ne sais pas." Becky shrugged eloquently. "But it is done. The banns are in the process of being posted."

  "And the wedding? When is it to take place?"

  "In six weeks' time."

  "Six—"

  "I know, I know: time is of the essence. Alors. You must understand, cherie. That, too, is part of the von und zu Engelwiesen tradition." Becky waved a manicured hand, the square-cut emerald flashing from a finger. "Naturellement, it goes back hundreds of years, to when the postal systems took months, and there were no such things as telephones or fax machines."

  "I suppose," Dina said slowly, "I should call Zandra when I get home."

  "C'est une bonne idea." Becky nodded wisely. "Oui. I imagine she shall ask you to be the matron of honor."

  Dina blinked, momentarily startled. She will? Why, of course she will!

  Dina immediately felt a whole lot better. Yes, indeed. She was definitely bouncing back after the initial shock.

  "At any rate, ma chere, I was thinking ..."

  "Yes?"

  "Well, you are Zandra's best friend, just as I am Heinzie's. Alors. It might be a good idea if the four of us got better acquainted, n'est-ce pas?"

  "What do you suggest?" Dina asked, bowing to Becky's superior knowledge.

  "Oh, an intime little dinner to celebrate the engagement might be appropriate."

  "How clever of you! Yes. I shall arrange it at once!" Dina said brightly, instantly rising to the occasion.

  Miraculously, her spirits were already completely restored.

  The marble floor of the picture gallery in Schloss Engelwiesen, on the island of the same name, in the lake of the same name—Lake Engelwiesen, the second-largest lake in Bavaria—shone icily, like the surface of the frozen water outside.

  One ninety-foot wall of deeply recessed, evenly spaced French windows sent brilliant dazzles of northern light streaming into the long room; hanging from floor to ceiling on the opposite wall were hundreds of gilt- framed Old Masters—superb, museum-quality Bellinis and Botticellis, Rubenses and Rembrandts, Titians and Tintorettos—only the mere tip of the iceberg as far as the von und zu Engelwiesen art treasures were concerned.

  And, overhead, suspended from the barrel-vaulted, twenty-six-foot ceiling which had been painted in the style of Charles Le Brun two hundred years earlier, were two rows of thirty matching, rock-crystal chandeliers.

  It was a room for contemplation, for feasting the eye and boggling the mind.

  At the moment, Princess Sofia was anything but contemplative or boggled. The majordomo had brought her a cardboard FedEx envelope, sent to her from New York by her brother, Prince Karl-Heinz. Opening it, she had found two smaller sealed envelopes inside.

  Having torn open the first, she now stalked furious circles, her mauve, ostrich-trimmed gown stirring up great agitated currents of air.

  "Verdammt noch eitimal!" she screeched, waving the thick, engraved invitation so violently she was losing bits of ostrich feathers in the process. "Do something, Erwein! Or are you just going to sit there and let our inheritance walk away?"

  "What can I do?" her husband, Count Erwein, whined from one of the carved, thronelike Louis XIV armchairs which lined the length of both walls. "You know your family's law of inheritance."

  "You useless insect!" Sofia's screech was so strident that Etti, Welfy, Popo, and Luisa, her four King Charles spaniels, leapt from their perches and fled the room, ears flat against their heads. "Sometimes I wonder why I ever married you!"

  She whirled around, wild things dancing primitive dervishes in her eyes.

  "Coward!" she accused. "Untermetisch!"

  Count Erwein Johannes Emmanuel von der Grimmkau cringed and shuddered and tried to make himself as invisible as possible. His wife was one-third princess, one-third long-suffering martyr, and one-third shrew. She had the most terrible temper he had ever known, and he was completely cowed by her. It did not matter that she was beautiful, for Sofia's was a cold beauty, all sharp planes and shiny angles and razor edges. She was one hundred percent von und zu Engelwiesen, with castles and land, riches and power, and blood so blue it made Erwein's own distinguished bloodline and title seem thinly diluted and third-rate by comparison, facts which she never let him forget.

  Everything was hers—including a streak of such greed, possessiveness, and envy that all her waking hours were spent on plotting how to get even more. If someone had something she didn't, she could not sleep until it was hers.

  And usually, Princess Sofia slept very well.

  For whatever or whomever stood in her path, she ruthlessly cut down to disposable size. And whatever or whomever she couldn't cut down or chop up or easily destroy, she weakened through sheer persistence—and eventually triumphed over by scheming.

  Princess Sofia was Lucrezia Borgia incarnate. Erwein knew. How well he knew! Because he had suffered more at the hands of this woman than any man should ever have to endure.

  Now, Sofia's wrath was building as she worked herself up into one of her world-class rages.

  Erwein sat there, trembling and cowering in the thronelike chair. He couldn't imagine a single worse incident for inflaming his wife's temper than the announcement of Karl-Heinz's impending marriage.

  Now Sofia will be truly impossible, Erwein thought with trepidation. If only I could run away. If only I could take a rocket ship to the stars ...

  "Erwein."

  Sofia's voice sent arrows of dread piercing into his flesh, and he looked up guiltily.

  "There is only one thing we can do." She paused and gave him a hard look. "It is all up to you now."

  "Me?" he squeaked.

  "Yes, you. Or don't you love our children?"

  "Of course I love them," he lied miserably.

  I hate them! he thought. They all take after their mother.

  "And you want everything to be theirs, do you not?" Sofia went on. "The businesses and castles? The true power of the von und zu Engel- wiesens? You do want them to have what should rightfully be theirs?"

  "I ... I don't understand," he stammered, and squirmed nervously in his chair.

  Sofia smiled without humor. "Oh, I think you do, Erwein."

  But Erwein really didn't understand. His mind was incapable of devi- ousness. He truly had no idea of what she was getting at.

  "My father!" Sofia hissed softly, quickly glancing around to make certain none of the multitude of servants was eavesdropping. "Don't you see? Only life support is keeping him alive!"

  Erwein sat there and swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing.

  "If Karl-Heinz and that bitch Zandra have a male heir before he dies, our children will end up with nothing! Do you hear me, Erwein? Nothing!"

  She paused again, and her voice
went colder and harder.

  "It's up to you to do something, Erwein. For the first time in your life, be a man and fix things!"

  Erwein felt a suffocating cloud closing in on him. "But ... but what can I fix?"

  "You have only to go to the clinic and unhook my father's life- support system. That is all you have to do, Erwein."

  Erwein's eyes got as big and round as dinner plates, and his mouth fell open in protest. But his vocal cords were frozen. He was too shocked to emit a sound.

  "For once, Erwein—just for once—you can do something for us and the children. Is that asking for too much?"

  Somehow Erwein managed to find his voice. "W-why don't you do it?" he whispered.

  Sofia stared at him, the thin lines around her mouth tightening. "Believe me, this is not the first time it has crossed my mind. However, until now there has never been any need to resort to it. Heinzie has always been a confirmed bachelor! Who would have thought he'd have it in him to settle down? But this—" Sofia brandished the wedding invitation and shook it wrathfully. "—this suddenly changes everything! Now, will you do as I ask?"

  "But ... why me?" Erwein whimpered. "Why don't you do it, Sofia? H-he's your father!"

  Sofia looked at him with such fury that he cringed, but suddenly she sighed deeply, and her face grew uncharacteristically gentle and pensive.

  "I can't!" she whispered, pacing back and forth in a flurry of agitation. "Much as I'd like to, I simply ... can't. Um Gottes willen, he's my father! I love him."

  "I-I can't do it either," Erwein stuttered.

  Sofia stopped in midpace and glared at him. "Was zum Teufel ist los mit Dir?" she demanded. "It's not like he's your father."

  "I-I can't commit murder, Sofia. Bitte," he begged. "Don't ask me to do this. I-I can't."

  She looked at him with disgust. "You wretched, spineless little Untermensch! Don't think this subject is closed," she said ominously. "We will discuss it later."

  Turning away from him, she tore open the second envelope. Probably something else to do with plans for that verfluchtes—

  She scarcely read a few lines before she let out an unearthly shriek.

  Erwein's blood froze.

  She balled up the paper and tossed it as far as she could throw it. "I'll kill him!" she screamed. "Gott behiite! As you are my witness, Erwein, with my own two hands I will kill that rotten brother of mine!"