How to Murder a Millionaire

by Nancy Martin

  “Why is she here?” Peach shouted. “Just to torment me! She’s out there parading around like she owned him!”

  I had hesitated too long and now my curiosity kept me where I was. The argument continued on the stairs.

  “Please don’t be upset,” Pamela coaxed.

  “Well, she didn’t own him,” Peach bellowed, sounding far from the sedate, composed woman I knew. “She might have enjoyed his company from time to time, but he was mine! Mine!”

  “I know, Grammy.”

  “He shouldn’t have kept her a secret! If I’d known about her, I’d never—I wouldn’t—I can’t believe the old goat thought he could get away with having two mistresses! And for godsake, she’s old!”

  Then Peach burst into tears and I heard her rushing footsteps go up the stairs. Five seconds later, a door slammed on the second floor.

  I heard Pamela curse indelicately, and then she came down into the foyer. She saw me and stopped on the marble floor, twelve feet away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

  Pamela Treese, very young and so painfully slim that her eyes looked like they’d been drawn by a Disney cartoonist, sighed and came towards me. “She hasn’t been herself, you know. She’s very upset about Rory.”

  “I know.”

  “She didn’t mean anything just now. It’s just that Eloise makes her furious.”

  Eloise Tackett? Eloise and Rory?

  “Rory’s death was horrible,” Pamela continued, “and now my wedding—it’s just such a terrible strain on everyone.” Big tears welled up in her Bambi eyes and she began to cry.

  I barely knew Pamela, but I gave her a hug. Putting my arms around her, I realized she was beyond thin. She was hardly more than brittle bones and creamy skin. I patted her bony back and recognized a champion vomiter. “It’s okay, darling.”

  “N-no, it isn’t,” Pamela cried. “Grammy has gone crazy, and I—I’m supposed to be on my best behavior and it—it’s just t-too hard. I can’t wait for the wedding to be over!”

  I pulled her into the sitting room, and we perched on the edge of a silk-upholstered Chippendale sofa. A huge longcase clock towered over us, ticking sonorously. I gave Pamela the linen handkerchief from my handbag, and she snuffled prettily into it for several minutes while I placated her with nonsense.

  “Just give her a few more days,” I said. “She’ll calm down, and the wedding will be beautiful. It just takes time.”

  Pamela sniffed and looked hopeful. She stopped twisting the handkerchief between her bitten-down fingernails.

  “Is your dress ready?” I asked, hoping to divert her. “And the flowers ordered?”

  Pamela nodded. “We decided against releasing the doves. Lincoln kept joking they were, like, going to crap on the guests.”

  “Well, he’s a sensible young man like his father,” I said.

  “So we’re having a shower of rose petals instead. I just hope they don’t smell like compost.”

  “And your honeymoon?” I asked. “Are you going away?”

  “Two weeks in Italy,” Pamela said, beginning to perk up. “Then we’re moving into a house on Delancey Street. It’s being painted while we’re traveling.”

  “It sounds as if you have everything beautifully planned,” I soothed.

  She looked a lot like her grandmother, despite her complete lack of body fat. Very straight with a natural elegance that would, unfortunately, be ruined by osteoporosis by the time she was fifty. Perhaps she didn’t have Peach’s intelligence, but a few years of good books and sensible friends might do the trick.

  Pamela smiled fetchingly at me. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Well—”

  “We found our surrogate!”

  “Your—?”

  I must have looked completely blank, because Pamela laughed. “For our baby! I haven’t had a period since I was fourteen, so we’re using a surrogate. She’s the sweetest thing—from Norway, blond genes, you know—and I think it’s going to work out wonderfully. Our lawyer is closing all the loopholes now. We want to be sure she never sees the baby, of course.”

  I had no clue what the proper response should be to such a revelation. “How nice,” I managed to say, abandoning the hope that even graduate school could help Pamela.

  “Do you think I need to go back to the party?” she asked, as empty-hearted as a junior-high cheerleader. “I’d really rather skip the tea. The sight of all that food makes me nauseous.”

  I patted her hand. “Everyone will understand you must look after your grandmother.”

  “She’s beside herself,” Pamela confided. “She found out Rory had a girlfriend and went ballistic.”

  “It must have been a terrible shock.”

  “Yeah, but, like, what did she think? She wouldn’t sleep with him, so of course he went looking for someone else. Men are such pigs.”

  “All those years with Rory, she never—?”

  “Not once,” Pamela said proudly. “And who could blame her? I mean, he wasn’t exactly gorgeous. Or even very clean.”

  I thought Rory looked perfectly sanitary, and I was willing to stack my judgment up against anybody’s—except perhaps that of Pamela Treese, who now that I looked more closely, appeared to have scrubbed her hands down to a new layer of pink, scaly skin.

  “So who cares if he slept with Eloise Tackett?” Pamela went on. “Let her have him! It’s what Grammy had with Rory that counts. Public respect. Dignity. But she’s gone postal about it. I’m so glad we don’t have a gun in the house.”

  “You don’t think Peach would harm Eloise?”

  “Who knows? It must have been humiliating. When Grammy found that drug in Rory’s hand!” Pamela shuddered in disgust.

  “The Viagra?”

  “Right, and then she figured out that the Tackett woman gave it to him, well, you can imagine how manic she got.”

  “How did Peach discover Eloise gave Rory the Viagra?”

  “She interrupted them discussing it. She was so furious! I thought maybe she had—Well, no, she wouldn’t hurt Rory.”

  Wouldn’t she? I tried to remember the way Peach looked as she came down the staircase that night. She’d been distraught over her argument with Rory. Or had she killed him? Were the police right in their pursuit of her after all?

  Stunned, I managed to say, “I’m sure she’s glad to have you here.”

  “Thank you.” Pamela stood up. “I’d better get back to her. You’ve been very kind.”

  “I’ll find my own way out,” I said.

  She went upstairs, and I staggered back through the kitchen, wondering if Harold Tackett knew his wife had been having an affair with Rory Pendergast. Or had Eloise successfully diverted Detective Bloom’s questions with her blunt denials?

  Outside, I found the Intelligencer photographer waiting for me under the arbor. It was Sara Jane, the same young woman who had snapped the pictures of the mayor. I felt as if we’d bonded that night, and she obviously agreed. We conferred with the committee chair and decided on the photographs. I suggested a backdrop of the rose arbor, which might come in handy with the article I intended to write about Pamela’s wedding. I thought readers might like a prewedding peak at the garden.

  The committee chair was a birdlike woman in a huge straw hat and short white gloves with daisies embroidered on the wrists. Her hands fluttered nervously as she talked. “We invited the Pendergast sisters to come,” she explained. “They were supposed to plant a peach seedling to honor Mrs. Treese, but they didn’t return my calls, and I’m sure they don’t intend to come so soon after their brother’s funeral, but I do wish they’d phoned because I could have made alternative plans, so now I just don’t know what to do!”

  “We’ll take a few general photos of everyone else,” I said. “Some candid shots of your guests enjoying themselves will be wonderful.”

  “Well, if you think so,” she whimpered, then walked off mumbling anxiously.

  Th
e photographer enjoyed snapping pictures of beautifully dressed women against the backdrop of the lavish garden. A few men in ice cream suits and straw boaters lent just the right air of charm and civility to promote the flower show. I began to hope the photos would be so pretty that nobody on the committee would miss the Pendergast sisters.

  My mind flew back to the news that Rory and Eloise Tackett had been lovers. I couldn’t believe it. Eloise seemed so devoted to her husband. Had she strayed from her marriage? With a man her husband made no bones about despising? A man she obviously disliked herself?

  Did the police know where the Viagra came from?

  I wondered if Jonathan Longnecker could tell me about the Tackett-Pendergast relationship since he had worked for both families.

  I found Jill again behind the tea tables. “The party you’re working tonight at Lexie Paine’s. Did you say it was going to be for museum people?”

  “That’s what I was told. We made sushi. God, I hope Dad didn’t make them too early. He doesn’t pay attention to that kind of detail sometimes.”

  I made a mental note to avoid the sushi.

  Just as I was about to leave, I noticed a small entourage come through the gate that bisected Rory’s boxwood hedge. The group entered Peach’s garden and began to make a majestic procession along the rose arbor.

  “It’s the Pendergast sisters!” an awestruck bystander whispered near me. “They’ve been supporters for years.”

  “I never thought they’d come today,” murmured another voice.

  Lily Pendergast wore another black dress—this one covered with floating bits of chiffon that gave her the look of a haute couture scarecrow. Her shorter sister was decked out in yet another extravagant tracksuit with a matching baseball cap decorated with flowers. I decided to keep my distance as they were greeted by a flock of committee members.

  Someone dragged out a potted peach tree, and someone else began to make a garbled speech. The photographer took pictures of everyone. Lily and Opal Pendergast each accepted a gold-painted shovel.

  It was only a ceremonial shovel of dirt, but I watched as the sisters each hefted their garden tools with surprising strength for their ages.

  My mind was full of adultery and sexual conquest among the elderly. I mused about fratricide as the Poison Gas Sisters dug into Peach Treese’s flower bed. Had they spent their years wishing they had control of the family money while their brother trotted the globe, bought extravagant art and gained influence among powerful people?

  No, it seemed unlikely that they had murdered their brother for his fortune. They looked pretty well-off to begin with. And I assumed they had inherited a cut of their father’s estate. They lived in comfort in Palm Beach, after all.

  But now that they had the whole fortune in their clutches, would they want more? Did they plan to sell Rory’s newspaper and put me out of a job before I had really sunk my teeth into work? Maybe the idea of running a newspaper—even from a civilized distance—was too much responsibility for two ladies to handle at their ages.

  Well before Rory’s death there had been rumors that he was considering selling the paper. But could the possible sale of the paper have driven some employee to murder?

  I thought of Kitty Keough’s rant about the Intelligencer. I remembered the look on her face as she shouted at me. She might have been so terrified of losing her hard-fought social position that murder seemed the only way she could keep her job. Except, I reasoned, if she’d killed Rory, her plan had back-fired. The Pendergast sisters might well destroy Kitty’s raison d’être.

  “Tch, tch,” said another committee member. “They look happy as larks, don’t they? And their dear brother barely cold in his grave.”

  Chapter 17

  My friend Lexie Paine knew how to throw a party. First of all, she had a great time herself.

  “Darling!” she cried, throwing her arms around me. “You poor dear, what a trial. A trial! You must have a drink. What will you have? Anything but red wine. Somebody always stains my carpet when I serve red wine, so I’ve sworn off. Name your poison. Please don’t make me drink alone.”

  “You’re having Perrier, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes.” She waggled her empty martini glass. “But I have to keep up appearances. Are you totally whacked, sweetie? If you are, it doesn’t show a bit. Not a bit. You look absurdly gorgeous. Love the duds.”

  Lexie, of course, looked deceptively delicate in a black slip dress that matched her sleek black hair. But her square shoulders belied hours of paddling her kayak on the river, and the warrior’s gleam in her eye bespoke a keen intelligence that made her a financial whiz. Good thing, too, since she’d inherited a truckload of money when her investment banker father passed away a decade earlier. She’d made partner in her father’s old financial firm by age thirty and looked to be on her way to running the show when his contemporaries cashed in their portfolios. The museum had begged her to join their board, and she had the right combination of money smarts and good taste to help lead that institution to even greater heights.

  Plus she was a hoot.

  She linked her arm with mine and ducked her head furtively close. “I hear you’re taking no prisoners as Kitty Keough’s protégée. Is it kill or be killed? Pistols at dawn? Death by—oh, heavens. I’m sorry. What am I babbling about?”

  “It’s okay. A little gallows humor is just what I need.”

  Lexie lived along Boathouse Row, the stretch of picturesque Victorian boathouses built by private rowing clubs that still sculled the river in shells and conducted colorful regattas. The turrets and gables of the old houses were almost as picturesque as the scads of handsome athletes who decorated the riverscape on weekends and evenings. A lover of the water, Lexie bought a boathouse that had fallen into disrepair and she was living on the upper floors in renovated splendor. She had swooped into Pottery Barn one afternoon for simple, disposable furniture, but the walls were adorned with truly beautiful works of art from the collection of her mother, a woman of discerning taste and double fortune after remarrying an Argentinean named Helmut.

  My favorite painting in the boathouse depicted a black-haired woman who had thrown herself in naked abandon on a heap of golden pirate treasure and luxuriated in the riches.

  Lexie said, “I want to hear about everything. The rumors are rampant, darling. Did you really find poor Rory? Are the police using rubber hoses? And what’s this about a man you’re seeing? I mean, finally, dear! Finally!”

  “What man?”

  “Someone saw you with a veritable blacksmith, sweetie. A linebacker. A longshoreman! Shoulders out to here.” Lexie threw her arms extravagantly wide. “I can’t wait to hear the gory details.”

  “There is no gore, especially not in public,” I said, glancing around the crowd that lolled on her sofas and eyed me with frank curiosity over their drinks. “It’s not nearly as exciting as you imagine. In fact, it’s a little scary.”

  “Oh, how delicious.”

  “Listen, Lex, I need to find somebody tonight, and I thought he might be here with your museum friends. Jonathan Longnecker. Do you know him?”

  “Know him? Not in the Biblical sense, of course, since he’s purely the other persuasion.” Lexie popped her dark eyes wide in mock despair. “I hope he’s not your blacksmith. He hardly qualifies.”

  “No, no, I just need to talk to him.”

  Lexie saw my expression and got serious in a hurry. “Why, honey, are you all right? What’s wrong?”

  My friend’s immediate concern caused my throat to clog up. “It’s Libby. She’s done something stupid, and I’m trying to figure out what before she ends up—well, you know Libby.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Lexie. “She’s done some work for the museum, you know. She has a talent for restoration. I think she’d have a future in the biz if she weren’t such a ditz.”

  “I know. She’s created a real mess this time.”

  “Can I help?”

  Lexie, with her connection
s to the museum, had a lot to lose if she became entangled in a scandal. I said, “I’ll talk to Longnecker first. Maybe he can tell me what I need to know.”

  “If you think so.” She looked doubtful. “He’s a jerk, you know.”

  “I’ll run up a flag if I need help.”

  She gave me a hug and took me out to the balcony that overlooked the river. A heavy smell rolled in off the water, as if rain were on the way.

  Jonathan Longnecker was nuzzling the neck of a college boy. He looked up, annoyed at our interruption, then realized who we were and straightened in a flash.

  “Jonathan,” said Lexie, “Nora is my friend. Play nice or I’ll cut you off at the knees. Come with me,” she said, crooking her forefinger at the boy. “I’ll get you another Pepsi.”

  With Lexie’s daunting power and influence backing me up, I seemed to have gained a few respect points in Longnecker’s mind. But he wasn’t ready to be completely nice to me. So he sulked. “So?” he asked. “Where’s your goon?”

  “Truce,” I said, going to the railing beside him. “If we could go to neutral corners for a minute, we might both benefit.”

  He raised one eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest in the pose of a suave matinee double agent. “What does that mean?”

  “I need to know about Rory Pendergast’s relationship with Harold and Eloise Tackett.”

  “The three amigos? What do I get if I tell you anything?”

  “A little closer to your Chinese folio.”

  His gaze flicked towards the house where Lexie’s voice rose in laughter at someone’s joke. He said, “I’m listening.”

  “Rory collected the same kind of art that Harold does, right?”

  “The sexy stuff? Yeah.”

  “And they competed for the same pieces from time to time.”

  “So?”

  I pinned him with a look. “If you were working as an agent for both of them, I suppose you might have offered the same pieces to both Harold and Rory.”

  “It wasn’t unethical,” Longnecker said quickly. “The pieces always went to the highest bidder.”

  With quite a bit of encouragement from Longnecker, I supposed, who stood to make his commission on the sale no matter what. The higher the price, of course, the higher the commission.