A Crazy Little Thing Called Death

by Nancy Martin

  Her cell phone rang, and Emma took the call.

  “Ten o’clock sharp,” she ordered her client. “And don’t be late or I’ll give your place to somebody else.”

  Of course I wanted to know what she was up to. But Michael came in to report he’d popped the truck door open—a maneuver he’d managed to accomplish in thirty seconds, I noticed—and Emma bolted.

  Libby came in from the porch and watched them leave. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “About Ignacio? Don’t worry. Emma’s not an idiot.”

  “She has very poor judgment sometimes.” Libby’s frown had given way to something more like longing. “Especially where men are concerned.”

  Look who’s talking was the phrase that nearly slipped out of my mouth, but I managed to keep it to myself.

  Libby decided she needed color-coded index cards for the wedding bulletin board, so she got into her minivan and roared off. Michael and I carried coffee and the Sunday newspapers into the library, where we read the front-page report of the grisly discovery at the polo match.

  In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Michael was mentioned only as “a person of interest who was detained for questions and released after two hours.”

  “Three,” Michael said. “But who’s counting?”

  The Intelligencer had no qualms about naming names.

  “Convicted criminal Michael Abruzzo, son of reputed mob boss ‘Big Frankie’ Abruzzo, was questioned by police.” No mention of his release.

  After reading that, neither one of us felt much like relaxing, but I made a pretense of skimming the rest of the newspapers. Michael read the business section and the sports pages, did the puzzles with a felt marker, then pulled out the manual for a telescope he’d bought when we came home from our cruise. While on the yacht, he’d become interested in the big telescope that belonged to Lexie’s mom, and he was slowly figuring out how to assemble one for himself. As I turned the pages of the newspaper, I thought how easy it was to pretend nothing felt wrong between us as long as we were reading.

  Then I found an article about Ben Bloom’s suburban police department and became absorbed in the politics that seemed to be tearing apart the local government. The police were being accused of slacking off just as the grisly discovery of a dismembered hand clearly indicated a murder had occurred in their fine community.

  Michael tossed down his book first. “I think I’ll go check on my car.”

  I looked up from the police story. He meant the car he’d wrecked the day before. “Where is it?”

  “The guys are working on it down at the garage.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  He grinned. “The beauty of owning your own business is the preferential treatment.”

  “Shall I come along? We could have lunch afterwards.”

  He shook his head. “Better not. I don’t know how long this might take. There could be complications. Plus I’ll go to Mass on my way. You’re just going to stay here today, right? Relax and take care of yourself?”

  “Who could relax with Libby coming back any minute?”

  “Promise you’ll stay in?”

  “No promises,” I said, but I think he assumed I was joking.

  I noticed that Michael’s mind had been elsewhere all morning, and I was fairly certain he wasn’t really worrying about his car. But I refrained from asking any questions when he kissed me good-bye.

  To be honest, I had other plans, too.

  As soon as he was out of the house, I got on the phone and called my driver, Reed Shakespeare. I asked him if he was free to take me into the city.

  “Now?” Reed asked, startled.

  “Well…if you’re not busy.”

  “I’m taking my mother to church.”

  Rozalia Shakespeare, a God-fearing woman of profound faith, never missed an opportunity to sing in the choir. Her voice could rattle the stained-glass windows of the AME Church.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry. Maybe another time.”

  “No,” Reed said, sounding relieved, “I can pick you up in an hour.”

  “You sure?” I didn’t want to be the one to tempt a young man from his religion.

  “An hour,” he said, and hung up.

  Just enough time to shower and dress and make a plan.

  I was decked out in a pink suit with a pencil skirt when Reed arrived in the black town car. Fortunately, Libby returned in time to make sure the twins didn’t set off a bomb or commit any crimes against nature, so I dashed down the back porch steps and met Reed at the rear passenger door. He carried an open umbrella to protect me from a fine April mist that filled the air.

  “How nice to see you back, Reed.” I wanted to kiss him on the cheek, but I knew he’d disapprove. He liked to keep his distance. We settled on a handshake. “How was London? Did you enjoy your semester abroad?”

  “It was okay,” he said, stone-faced as always. “Food was terrible.”

  “It’s amazing the British Empire didn’t bring home a few good recipes while they were off conquering the world, right?”

  “Uhm.” He helped me into the backseat and closed the door.

  When I’d first been hired on at the Intelligencer by the newspaper’s owner, an old family friend, part of the deal was that I would receive the services of a driver in addition to my small paycheck. I’d worked for a grand total of three days before the real reporters began making fun of me and my chauffeur. I had no idea journalists weren’t driven around to their assignments. But since I couldn’t hold a driver’s license due to my tendency to faint—the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took a dim view of losing consciousness behind the wheel of a vehicle—I continued to rely on Reed for transportation. His schedule of classes at the community college was fortunately flexible enough to mesh with my own odd hours, so we spent a lot of time together.

  But Reed still refused to be very friendly. The social stigma of a young black man driving a white woman around the city of Philadelphia infuriated him. I think he lived in dread of being spotted by his friends.

  “Where we going?” he asked when he’d gotten behind the wheel.

  “To a Sunday brunch.” I gave him the address.

  He made no judgment about our destination, turning on the radio to a Sunday gospel show to prevent conversation, and we were off.

  I couldn’t help noticing Reed had gotten himself a new haircut since returning from his trip to England. Rather than the close-cropped, no-nonsense style of before, his hair was neatly trimmed into sharp angles around his ears and across his forehead. For the first time, I detected a small show of ego in the young man. Which had to be a good thing.

  Within the hour, Reed slid the big car into the well-to-do Chestnut Hill neighborhood. He nosed the car to the curb in front of a narrow store-front on an upscale street. A few droplets of rain spattered the car’s windshield.

  “Don’t get out—I won’t get wet. Come back in an hour?”

  Reed shrugged. “I can stick close.”

  As I got out of the car, he shut off the engine and reached for a book he kept in the door pocket. Given any free time, Reed studied. I still hadn’t figured out what classes he was taking, but I gave him credit for being so diligent.

  Shouldering my bag, I quickly crossed the wet sidewalk and ducked through a door with the name of the restaurant, Vernacular, painted in gilt letters on the glass. Someone had tied a damp golden retriever to the bike rack beside the door. The dog stared mournfully into the restaurant.

  The front room was crowded with tables where the single men of the neighborhood drank their coffee behind newspapers and peeked at the women who walked through. A large dour man in shirtsleeves and a skinny tie sat on a stool behind the cash register counting receipts. He didn’t glance up as I passed by.

  I knew the way and cut through the coffee shop portion of the restaurant and down two narrow steps before ending up in another world—a high-ceilinged room with skylights, flowers on the tables and a piano in one corner. The clientel
e was definitely more refined here, with a scattering of couples among the many well-dressed women.

  The man at the piano spotted me immediately and paused in his rendition of “Stormy Weather” to say into his microphone, “Hey, it’s Nora!”

  And half the room turned to greet me warmly.

  I had lived around the corner just a few years earlier, so I knew most everyone there. The Sunday regulars were all accounted for. Babe Mallick, the opera singer best known for taking an accidental swan dive into the orchestra pit when a set gave way under her weight during a performance of Aïda, sat with her friend Joanie Parsons, the tulip heiress. Ajole Ada looked like an African prince at a table with his brood of five giggly daughters, who appeared to be passing some electronic gadget under the table to one another while their father, eyes closed, intoned a long prayer. Garrett Steinbrecker, who was ninety years old and looked every single day of it, still came out for brunch once a week to drink Bellinis and listen to his much younger partner, Winston Washington, play the piano.

  I gave Joanie an air kiss, noted Babe was plowing through a double portion of French toast, and allowed Garrett to kiss my hand as I made my way through the crowded tables. I was glad to be snug among the group I knew so well.

  “Dilly,” I said when I got to the corner table. “Order me one of your special Bloody Marys, will you? No olives.”

  “Nora, we were just talking about you!”

  Ever the courtly gentleman, Dilly Farquar got to his feet and kissed me on both cheeks. His white hair was perfectly combed off his high forehead, and he smelled very subtly of a sedate cologne. He wore a fine cashmere sport coat over immaculate gray trousers and a pair of classic Cole Haan woven loafers, no socks. His striped shirt was crisp, his bow tie and matching pocket square ice-blue. But, of course, looking good was what Dilly breathed. He was the city’s foremost fashion columnist, and even out for brunch, he looked every inch the part.

  Holding my hand, he said, “I don’t believe you know Kaiser Waldman, do you? Kaiser, this is Nora Blackbird.”

  I kept my composure, but I’d never been so thankful that I’d left my blue jeans at home in favor of one of my grandmother’s most treasured garments—the pink Chanel suit. I’d even thrown a Fendi scarf around my shoulders, and my shoes were a respectable pair of Ferragamos I scrupulously maintained. I knew I’d see some of the city’s most fashionable citizens here, but I never imagined this.

  Kaiser Waldman, Paris designer of international fame, took my hand from Dilly and gathered up my left one, too, then bowed over them as if bestowing a blessing. He practically clicked his heels. When he opened his eyes, he stared at the diamond on my finger before meeting my gaze.

  “It is my pleasure,” he said in his impossibly German-and French-accented English, “to meet the lovely girl on the rainy Sunday morning.”

  Coming from the man who dressed more Oscar nominees than Givenchy, such a compliment was either genuine flattery or complete bullshit. I chose to think it was genuine. “I’m honored to meet you, monsieur.”

  “Call me Kaiser,” he purred. “All my ladies do.”

  The chances of becoming one of Kaiser Waldman’s clients—one of his famous “ladies”—were as slim as winning the Irish Sweepstakes, but I smiled and thanked him and hoped the Chanel didn’t look thirty years old, which it was.

  “Please join us.” Dilly pulled out the extra chair at their small round table.

  “Am I interrupting? You must be conducting an interview for the newspaper.”

  Years ago, Dilly had grown tired of being a wealthy heir with nothing to do but shop, and he began writing for the premier newspaper in the city. Very quickly, he’d made himself into the arbiter of taste in Philadelphia. His column was well read.

  He said, “We finished the interview two days ago. Please join us.”

  “You wear the elegant piece of jewelry.” Kaiser had been unable to stop staring at my ring.

  “Thank you.”

  “It is the famous design, but of course you know that.”

  Surprised, I looked at the rock on my hand. “No, I didn’t, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh? It is done by Calvetti, the colleague of mine. He does work for the jewelers in New York and Rome. May I ask how you came by the ring?”

  “It’s an engagement ring from my—from the man I’m going to marry.”

  Dilly coughed discreetly. “Shall we sit, Nora? I was telling Kaiser about you just a few minutes ago.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Kaiser worked with Penny Devine,” Dilly said. “We were speculating about whether or not she’s actually dead.”

  We sat down and the waiter appeared to take my order, which Dilly managed to convey merely by circling their two Bloody Marys with his forefinger and winking. It gave me time to slip the Fendi from my shoulders and settle into my chair.

  Kaiser sat back and crossed one leg grandly over the other. His trouser cuff lifted to reveal black, low-cut boots with three-inch heels. He was wearing a four-button suit of silver wool with a black turtleneck underneath, perhaps to hide the jowls that had begun to appear beneath his renowned square jaw. He had very dark brows and a mane of iron gray hair worn swept away from his face and surely sprayed to keep it in place. His skin glowed as if from a recent peel.

  He braced one elbow on the arm of his chair and held a swizzle stick between his first two fingers as if it were a cigarette. Tilting his chin up, he said, “Penny was the bird. Always flitting from one thing to the next, but never happy. Never satisfied.”

  Dilly sent me a look to communicate that we must be patient with Kaiser’s grandiose poetry. “We heard you found the—er—remains.”

  “Yes.”

  “It must have been awful,” Dilly said coolly. “But now that you’ve had time to reflect, do you think the—I mean—was it Penny?”

  “I can’t be sure.” The police had not asked me to keep any secrets, so I said, “But there was a wristwatch. Studded with small diamonds. Something Penny would have liked, I’m sure.”

  “Well, then.” Dilly shook his head. “This is very sad news. I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  “You knew her, didn’t you, Dilly?”

  Vaguely, he said, “We were friends once, many years ago, that’s all.”

  “I knew her.” Kaiser sighed grandly. “The discerning customer. The perfectionist with her wardrobe. And with her weight never the same from one season to the next, preparing her order was the trial for everyone.”

  “You must have created many garments for her,” I said. “She always looked so beautiful.”

  He waved off the suggestion. “I made the few things for Penny, but not all her clothes. Because of her eating, I could not keep up with the demand. Sometimes she would be thin—sometimes she had the ass of a washer-woman. Many of us sewed for Penny Devine.”

  “Her collection must be astonishing,” Dilly murmured.

  Carefully, I said, “It’s hard to imagine that someone like Penny could have had enemies.”

  “Then you haven’t much imagination, my dear,” Dilly said.

  “She was evil,” Kaiser agreed.

  “Well, all right, she was nothing like her brother and sister. But who could hate her enough to kill her?”

  Kaiser said, “From time to time, I contemplated strangling her myself. I despised the woman. I hate the ungrateful. She was worse than the rock-and-roll singer with the pointy breasts.”

  “Was Penny so disliked in Hollywood, too?”

  Kaiser waved off the seriousness of my question. “She was despised on at least three continents.”

  My drink arrived along with a plate of toast points and foie gras surrounded by an artful display of caviar. Kaiser dug into the caviar with fury.

  Dilly raised an eyebrow at me.

  I said, “But she must have been murdered here. By someone in Philadelphia. Unless someone from Beverly Hills brought her arm here in a suitcase.”

  “I have the alibi,”
Kaiser said at once.

  “I wasn’t suggesting—”

  “Of course you weren’t,” Dilly intervened. “You’re simply wondering who could have committed such a heinous crime.”

  Kaiser made a rude noise with his mouth full. “Or service to humanity.”

  “Uhm,” I said, “Penny may have been unlikable, but that’s not necessarily a motive for murder. Since she spent so little time here, I’ve been wondering who she could have had relationships with in Philadelphia.”

  “Old friends?” Dilly suggested. “Or rather, old enemies?”

  “I’d like to know about her past, that’s all.”

  He smiled. “So you came to me because I’m so damnably old. Yes, Penny and I did grow up in the same era, same social circle. In fact, I may have been one of the few people who actually liked her. She was unpleasant from time to time, but hardly anyone understood the pressures she was under. Staying thin was very difficult for her, for example, but necessary to remain employed.”

  “Did she keep in contact with Potty and Vivian after she became successful in Hollywood?”

  “Who wants to keep in contact with the viper?” Kaiser muttered.

  Dilly hid a smile. “Actually, there’s hardly anyone I can think of who stayed in touch. Well, maybe your grandmother, Nora, but how long has she been dead? Penny burned a lot of bridges when she left.”

  “Is it true Penny had an illegitimate child?”

  Dilly’s face froze. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “Emma overheard it once—probably my mother gossiping on the phone. Is it true? Penny had a baby? Or was it just a rumor?”

  “Where there is the smoke,” Kaiser said solemnly, “there might be the conflagration.”

  Dilly wrestled with his conscience for a moment.

  “Dilly, I don’t want to pry. If you’re uncomfortable, I apologize—”

  “No, no.” He toyed with the skewer of olives from his Bloody Mary. “It was many, many years ago. Perhaps forty years now. She confided in me that she was—well, expecting.”

  Kaiser shook his head. “It is very inconsiderate, the having of babies. If my ladies get with the pregnant, I tell them not to return to me until their children are in school five years. It’s just too hard on my nerves to do so many fittings.”