by Nancy Martin
She stewed for a moment. “Maybe we should have some prewedding parties to get everyone accustomed to the idea of you married to a mob boss.” Despite my choke, Libby cried, “That’s it—I’ll throw you a wedding shower!”
“Libby—”
Emma shuffled into the kitchen in riding breeches and a dirty sweatshirt, with socks on her feet and a yawn on her face. “What the hell is all the noise about? Libby, I could hear you all the way upstairs.”
“Good morning!” Libby trilled. “You’re just in time to help plan a wedding shower for Nora.”
Emma scratched her stomach and blinked at me. With her hair standing out on her head, she looked like an electrocuted woodpecker.
I said, “Is that a love bite on your neck?”
She rubbed the spot and grinned. “You should see the one on my butt. Is there any coffee?”
“In a minute,” Libby promised around a mouthful of toast. “Meanwhile, you can tell us who’s upstairs in your bed. The man who telephoned for the midnight appointment?”
“Nah. Somebody else.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Oh, Em,” I said. “You didn’t.”
“Polo players make the best lovers,” Emma replied. “They play hard and walk away with a smile.”
My heart began to pound. “Please tell me you didn’t bring Raphael Braga into my home.”
“What’s it to you who I sleep with?” Emma threw herself into a chair, legs splayed. “At least I don’t make the kind of noise you two were making last night. Jeez, Nora.”
“What kind of noise?” Libby asked.
“Big noise,” Emma reported.
“Vocal expression can be an exciting part of lovemaking, you know. I once knew a Nepalese gentleman who chanted—”
“You have to get Raphael out of here,” I said. “I can’t have him in the house, Em.”
“Raphael Braga?” Libby used her forefinger to wipe a dribble of chocolate from her lower lip. “Isn’t he that handsome one from Brazil?”
“He can’t be here.” My voice went up an octave. “It’s important, Em!”
“What side of the bed did you wake up on? Or isn’t there any bed left after last night?”
“Please, Emma. If Raphael is here, will you please, please get rid of him right away?”
She looked at me at last and frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t want him here!”
“He isn’t here,” she said shortly. “I brought—oh, here he is.”
Into my kitchen walked an extraordinarily handsome young man. He wore low-slung jeans and a tight white undershirt, which defined the masculine curves of his body in a way that brought a whimper to Libby’s throat. His smile was bashful. He had tousled blond hair, deep dark eyes that pooled with shy sensuality and a generous, supple mouth that seemed to be permanently smiling. The rest of the inventory was the stuff of female fantasy: a strong throat, broad shoulders, sinewy arms, narrow hips and long, long legs. He was the perfect blend of Tarzan and Bambi, standing in my kitchen.
“Hello.”
“This is Ignacio,” Emma said. “He doesn’t speak English. Which comes in surprisingly handy, let me tell you.”
“Good morning,” I said to him, hoping my thundering heartbeat couldn’t be heard by everyone. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Hello,” he said again, still smiling.
Truly, I was sure I’d never been in the presence of a man so beautiful. His eyelashes were like velvet. His hands looked strong and sensual. For a moment, I thought Libby might have suffered a stroke. She still hadn’t blinked.
Emma patted the chair next to hers, and Ignacio slipped into it, beaming her the kind of adoring gaze a beagle puppy might give its master. I noticed his perfectly tanned neck sported, not one, but two vicious-looking love bites.
I got up, poured several cups of coffee and distributed them around the table. Ignacio accepted his without tearing his attention from Emma.
Which was the moment Emma’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out and answered by saying curtly, “This is too damn early to call.”
And she hung up.
Libby finally blinked and switched her stare to Emma. “Who was that?”
“I dunno. What’s it matter?”
“What if—well, it might have been the dentist calling to confirm your teeth cleaning.”
“If my dentist calls this number, it’s not about cleaning my teeth.”
“What on earth are you doing?” Libby gave up the pretense of concern for Emma’s dental health. “I was never more relieved than when you quit working at that awful Dungeon of Darkness, but if you’ve gotten into something even more appalling, Emma—”
“What? You’ll disown me?”
Libby summoned a long-suffering expression. “I will be very, very disappointed.”
“So what else is new? My phone calls are my business.” Emma sent me a wink.
“Exactly what kind of business—that’s what worries me.”
The wink told me Emma planned on tormenting Libby for as long as possible, and if I joined the discussion, I was only asking for more frustration in my life.
“So what happened,” I asked Emma, changing the subject, “after yesterday’s polo match? Did the police interview everyone on the field?”
Emma gulped her hot coffee. “I heard you discovered the body. The remains. The hand—whatever you call it. Did you faint?”
“She certainly did,” Libby said from the counter.
“Feeling okay now?”
“Fine, thank you.” I bit into my toast, which was delicious. “What happened after I left?”
Emma put a socked foot into Ignacio’s lap. At once he began to give her a massage, which she ignored. “The cops talked to a lot of us—everyone who’d been around the horse trailers. Asked what we’d seen, which was nothing. I think somebody might have noticed a maniac tossing amputated body parts on the lawn, right?”
“How long were you detained?”
“An hour or so. They let me go early because I had all those pony-club kids with me. Is anybody going to make more of that toast?”
Libby dropped two more slices into the toaster. “I don’t know why we have to talk about body parts over breakfast. It was bad enough yesterday.”
Ignoring her, Emma said to me, “Pretty gross, huh?”
“Very.”
“Everybody assumed the hand belonged to Penny Devine. Guess that means she didn’t die of natural causes.”
Libby shook her head and sighed. “What is the world coming to? Who would murder a movie star?”
“Anybody,” Emma said. “She was a bitch on wheels, remember? She called Daddy a pea brain at his father’s funeral.”
“I met Penny a few times.” Libby began to sort the pushpins by color and stick them into the blank bulletin board. “And she was very rude to me, too. She asked if I knew how to spell cellulite. I still haven’t decided if she was insulting my intelligence or my weight. Potty gave me some jelly beans to stop my crying.”
“Potty’s a dirty old man,” Emma said.
“How can you say that?” Libby asked. “He was very sweet.”
“Maybe while you were jailbait. When I was practicing at Eagle Glen with the polo team this week, he followed me around the grounds, and he wasn’t offering jelly beans. What a lech.”
“He had Nuclear Winter on his arm yesterday,” I said.
Libby got interested. “Did you really see her? Did she have her new breasts?”
“I wouldn’t know her new breasts from her old breasts, Lib. Is there something extraordinary about them?”
“She sued her doctor because the implants he gave her were too small—said he’d made a mistake by not giving her the ones she picked out. She complained to anyone who’d listen—including a local magazine that printed a story about plastic surgeries gone wrong. To shut her up, the doctor gave her a new set for free—at least, that’s the rumor down at Bellissima.”
&n
bsp; “The spa?”
“It’s her regular place,” Libby told us. “A friend invited me there for a chocolate body wrap last month. It was so sensuous! Except I must have gotten some up my nose. I’ve been sneezing Hershey’s Kisses ever since. Anyway, it’s Nuclear Winter’s hangout. She’s always getting beauty treatments there.”
“And it’s next door to the Towpath Club,” Emma said.
The Towpath Club was a venerable Philadelphia institution for men who worked in the financial district, but not exactly the kind of place young lions wanted to join. I had once heard the joke that in order to be eligible for membership, a man had to be old enough for Medicare. It was better known around the city as the Tar Pit Club because it was where the dinosaurs went to die.
“Maybe Potty gave Nuclear a few jelly beans on the sidewalk in between. She had her hooks in him pretty deeply yesterday.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Potty.” Emma traded one foot for the other, and Ignacio eagerly continued rubbing.
I said, “Let’s hope she doesn’t kill Potty.”
“He seemed confident he could make me happy. So he’s probably not afraid of Nuclear.”
“Maybe he uses MaxiMan,” Libby said.
“You know about MaxiMan?” I asked. “I thought it wasn’t on the market yet.”
“It’s easy to get,” Emma said, “if you know where to look.”
“Where?” Libby asked, with perhaps too much energy to be mistaken for idle curiosity.
“Under the table. The prototype is all over the club scene.”
“How do you know that?” Libby demanded. “Could you buy it?”
Emma shrugged. “If I wanted some, I know who to ask. Fortunately, I don’t know anyone who needs it.” She patted Ignacio on his head, and he smiled.
I asked, “Is it legal?”
“To buy it in the clubs? Of course not. Roofies aren’t legal, either, but they’re everywhere. In fact, I heard there’s a new flood of it since some of the Brazilian boys hit town.”
“The Brazilian polo players? They have roofies?” Libby looked askance at Ignacio.
“Not all of them,” Emma said. “It’s a fad among some of them, that’s all.”
“A fad?” I repeated. “Gummi bears are a fad.”
“Okay, bad choice of words. It’s a trend. Same with MaxiMan. Obviously somebody inside Devine Pharmaceuticals is making a few extra bucks outside the workplace.”
“Do you know who?”
“Nope. I imagine whoever it is would be in a shitload of trouble if he—or she—got caught. Why do you want to know?” She shot me a grin. “Mick’s not having a problem, is he?”
Libby saved me from answering by bringing buttered toast to the table. Ignacio never wavered from massaging Emma’s foot. Em grabbed both slices and smacked them together like a sandwich before taking a huge bite.
I said, “Anybody know anything about Vivian? What’s with that horrible truck of hers?”
Emma laughed. “You mean Roadkill Mama?”
“What?”
“Oh, she’s big into all that animal rights stuff, but she also cleans up roadkill—you know, dead animals on the highway. Paddy Horgan calls her if one of his horses dies, too. She takes the animal somewhere for a decent burial. She’s a real nut.”
“Her truck smells to high heaven,” Libby said. “Roadkill explains it.”
“I thought men like Horgan would sell dead animals to the glue factory.”
Emma shrugged. “Vivian pays better than the pet-food companies.”
“She actually pays money for dead animals?”
“Right. Out of respect. Her brother spends his money on jelly beans and women, and she spends it on animals.”
So much for wondering if Vivian had some nefarious reason for driving around with dead animals. I should have known she had an altruistic reason for doing so.
“Do Vivian and Potty live together?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. Potty’s living in the mansion at Eagle Glen. I heard he kicked Vivian out years ago.”
“I looked after Vivian’s cats once when I was a teenager,” Libby said. “Vivian called Mama to ask if I’d house-sit while she was in the hospital.”
“You stayed at Eagle Glen?”
Libby shook her head. “She had a small ranch house at the time. It was incredibly adorable. Like a little storybook house with kitty-cat art everywhere. A zillion little cat figurines. And at least two litters of kittens—real ones. She must have had two dozen cats in that place. They were everywhere, some of them wild. Actually, I was afraid they might gang up on me.”
“Vivian is a cat lady?”
“She used to be,” Libby said. “That was years ago. She even had a lion cub in a special cage. He came from a petting zoo that was shut down.”
“She had a sick-looking kitten with her yesterday. And a dog.” I remembered the skittish spaniel that had unwillingly trailed after Vivian at the polo match. Had she said the dog belonged to the caretaker?
“She just had cats then. Lots and lots of cats.”
“Where was the house?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Somewhere near here in Bucks County.”
“Was that the time she was in the hospital after Potty shot her?”
Emma laughed. “I’d forgotten about that! He was hunting quail, and she intervened to protect the birds. He shot her accidentally.”
Libby said, “Nora, what does all this have to do with Penny dying?”
“I don’t know. It’s just interesting family lore, I guess.”
“You don’t think Penny’s siblings had anything to do with her death, do you? Those dotty old dears?”
“I’m just asking idle questions, that’s all.”
Around a mouthful of toast, Emma said, “Wasn’t there an old rumor once that Penny had an illegit child?”
Libby sat down at the table with us. “Sweet Penny Devine got herself knocked up? Now, that would have been a scandal! Like Shirley Temple getting busted for cocaine.”
Emma frowned as she tried to recall. “Didn’t she? I can’t remember where I heard that story. Maybe from Mama? She was always letting things slip when I was around.”
“You used to eavesdrop on her phone conversations.”
Emma grinned. “Yeah, I did. Maybe that’s where I heard it. Something about Penny having a baby when she was supposed to do a movie. So she gave it away.”
“I never heard that,” Libby said. “I love celebrity gossip, don’t you? It makes them so real!”
“They are real,” I said. “Do you know anything else about Penny, Em?”
“Penny liked horses,” Emma said. “She bought horses as fast as she bought clothes and jewelry. It’s common knowledge she supplied polo ponies for Raphael Braga.”
At the mention of his name, I swallowed my last bite of toast and pushed the plate away.
Emma took note. “So what’s up with you and Raphael, Nora?”
“Not a thing.”
“I hope you’re not pining for him. I heard he had a date with Betsy Berkin last night.”
“Good for Betsy.”
My response just made Emma more curious. She asked, “How do you know him?”
“I think Ignacio needs some toast, don’t you? Would anyone like some cereal? I think there’s yogurt in the fridge, too. Ignacio? Breakfast?”
He smiled at me. “Hello.”
I got up and bustled around the kitchen.
Emma and Libby exchanged a look.
Which was when we heard a terrible crash and a muffled yelp from far away.
“What the hell?” Emma cried. She got up and led us all running for the living room.
At the bottom of the staircase lay Michael. He was sprawled on the floor, stunned.
“Michael!” I rushed to his side. “Are you all right?”
He used one hand to gingerly touch the back of his head, then looked at it dizzily. No blood. Sounding astonished, he said, “I slipped and fe
ll.”
“Nice going,” Emma said. “Maybe you ought to join a ballet company.”
He squinted up at her. “Hey, Em.”
“Don’t try to stand,” I said. “Have you broken anything?”
He tested one wrist and flexed his left leg uncomfortably before shifting his weight to get off the floor. “I don’t think so.”
I helped him to his feet.
“How the hell did you fall?” Emma asked, hiding a smile.
“I don’t know. One minute I was—”
“Here.” Libby held up a child’s toy truck. “I think you must have stepped on this.”
The toy was small and dark, easily missed on the staircase when the chandelier was turned off.
“Where did that come from?” I took it from Libby. “Does this belong to the twins?”
“They outgrew trucks years ago.”
Michael stretched his neck carefully. “Lucy must have left it there yesterday.”
Emma said, “How come none of the rest of us slipped on it?”
“Just my luck today, that’s all.”
“Hello,” Ignacio said cheerfully.
Michael took a limping step forward and shook his hand. “Hey, sorry. Mick Abruzzo. How y’doin’?”
“Hello,” Ignacio said again.
“Mr. Lucky.” Emma patted Michael’s shoulder. “Now that you’re marrying one of us, you’d better get used to accidents, big guy.”
Chapter Six
Emma and Ignacio had plans to pick up another pony to add to Emma’s collection. But it appeared that Ignacio had accidentally locked the keys in Emma’s pickup truck. Michael went outside to assess the situation.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Emma said to me when we were left alone in the kitchen. “Last night I put Brickle in the barn with Mr. Twinkles. There’s room for a couple more ponies. I figured I might cut Horgan out of the loop and give some lessons here.”
“Sure,” I said. “I like having kids around.”
Emma nodded. “We’re going to look at another pony today.”
“Bring some carrots home so I can make friends with them.”
“Sure.” She lingered, giving me a curious once-over. “You okay? After what I heard coming from your bedroom last night—”
“I’m fine. We’re both fine.” I realized I was blushing.
