by Nancy Martin
“Roxy Abruzzo. Still a wiseass.” He took his time tucking himself back into his trousers. “Who are you trying to hoodwink today?”
“Not you, that’s for sure.”
“Don’t lie to me, girl. I know a con artist when I see one.” He zipped up. “Still shooting pool for lunch money? And reading all those library books?”
Roxy shrugged. “Now and then.”
“I hope you return a few of them. The books, that is. I don’t mind losing the lunch money. You played with admirable finesse. Either that or you cheated. And if I didn’t notice at the time, you deserved your winnings.”
Roxy had met Julius last spring when he wanted to modernize the old carriage house into a garage. The house had been beautiful back then. She’d taken a few pieces of the carriage house, and he’d offered her a drink on his patio while he wrote her a check. They’d shared a couple of laughs after that and played a few games in which Roxy showed no mercy. She cleaned his pool table and his wallet, but Roxy had liked the guy. Admired his tendency to make up rules as he went along. She appreciated that he didn’t treat her like some kind of French housemaid when he’d made a pass at her. And he’d taken her rejection graciously.
Too bad his pool table had burned up. She could have won a few more extra bucks from him.
He said, “I see you’re still babysitting that moron.”
She should have hidden her tightened fists behind her back. “At least he knows when to keep his pants zipped.”
Julius shrugged. “An underrated virtue.”
Without his clothes, Julius Hyde might look like one of those half-animal men that played the flute at orgies—heavy in the thighs and hairy-chested. Even now, curly white hair bristled at the open collar of his crisp pink shirt. Roxy wondered if his legs were all woolly under his trousers—although she wasn’t curious enough to find out. He wore his white hair long, combed back from his forehead and waved over his shirt collar. He looked like a rich man who enjoyed his pleasures.
“Damn shame, isn’t it?” He cast a glance up at the burned remains of the house. “I’m sorry the old place ended up like this.”
“The insurance company will make you feel better.”
“My mother may feel better,” he corrected. “Depending on what the insurance company decides. Funny, isn’t it? A man like me still living in my mama’s house?”
The question sounded like one of those rhetorical things men consider when they’re feeling blue. But Roxy knew Julius had plenty of consolation prizes. He’d grown up in a filthy rich family, and when his father died he’d inherited enough dough to run a small country. When his old lady finally kicked, he’d inherit even more. He had dabbled in business, but gave it up to a younger brother when he’d lost interest in empire building and started making lousy friends and a few fierce enemies instead. He’d married a few times, but eventually stopped caring what anybody thought and did as he pleased. Roxy figured he was rich enough to get away with anything. His latest girlfriend made him a laughingstock in the city, but Julius hadn’t cared.
Until now, maybe.
Julius took a slim silver flask from the pocket of his trousers and unscrewed the cap. He had a nostalgic look in his eye as he glanced around the grounds. “I grew up here, you know. Before they sent me off to school. There’s a bomb shelter under that piece of lawn over there. A real bunker. I could have kept a girlfriend down there and nobody would have known. My wife Monica would never have fired up her curtains.”
“That’s creepy, Julius. Bad enough you have a girlfriend young enough to be your grandkid, but locking her in a bunker? Too freaky for me, and that’s saying a lot.”
He laughed shortly and removed his cigar to sip from the flask. “Do you have family, Roxy?”
“A daughter.”
“Well, someday she might drive you to socially inappropriate behavior.”
“It doesn’t take my kid to do that.”
Another laugh. “No regrets?”
“Not yet.”
“Good for you.” There was something else glimmering in his eyes, though. Sadness? Or maybe he’s nipping at the flask for courage, Roxy thought. To her, Julius suddenly looked a little spooked.
“You feeling some regrets, Julius?”
“It’s too late for that.” He caught her looking curious and grinned. “What are you doing here, though, young lady? Picking at the bones like the rest of the vultures? Why aren’t you out for dinner with a nice young man?”
“I’m still doing an honest day’s work, that’s why.”
“Not so honest sometimes,” he observed, then checked his watch as if he had an appointment. “I suppose that’s why I like you. There’s larceny in your soul. I’ll leave you to your job. Time for me to toddle off.”
With more sincerity than she usually felt, Roxy said, “Take care of yourself, Julius.”
“That’s what I do best.” He straightened his shoulders, summoned his self-respect, and departed.
Roxy watched him swagger around the house, but shook herself of the notion that maybe she should go after him.
“He okay?” Nooch asked.
“He’ll be fine. Amazing how a billion dollars can brighten your day. C’mon, let’s take a look around. I need to pay my kid’s school fees by next week or the nuns kick her out.”
She led Nooch the opposite way—around the terrace and past a row of burned hydrangeas.
On a previous visit, Roxy had found a shopping cart and some ragged blankets in the remains of the pergola at the end of the pool—evidence that homeless people had moved in after the fire. But today the shopping cart was gone. Left behind was a black barrel full of ashes. The scavengers had probably burned the plastic coating off copper wire here. They’d left nothing of value.
Roxy pushed past the bushes.
A marble statue stood in the flower bed behind the pool, half hidden by the collapsed pergola. A naked man, maybe a gladiator, judging by his stance. Forgotten, he stared nobly into the distance, as if watching his troops march off to victory. A tangle of ivy swarmed up his muscular leg, evidence that he wasn’t marching anywhere anytime soon.
“Whoa.” Nooch stopped short behind her. “Who’s the dude?”
“Some hero, I guess.”
He must have been holding a sword or a javelin at one time, but now his whole right arm was gone. The back of his head and most of his helmet were missing, too, but that didn’t matter much. Judging by the way he jutted his jaw and curled his lip, he had an ego bigger than his dick.
But Roxy could see he was special. A kind of energy coiled beneath the surface of his marble skin. He was very old, she guessed. And the owners of the house had forgotten about him. Otherwise, why was he still standing here? The night before demolition? A final ray of sunlight slipped through the tree branches overhead and danced along the curve of his magnificent shoulder.
With her pry bar, Roxy tore away some of the ivy.
“What are you doing?” Nooch asked. “You don’t want that, do you?”
“I sure do.”
“Why? It’s broken. You always say condition, condition, condition.”
“Not in this case.”
She slipped the blade of the bar beneath the base of the statue. Crusty with decay, the pedestal flaked a few crumbs, and then a splinter of marble broke loose and skittered down into the weeds. The statue rocked gently above her.
Roxy steadied him with a hand on his knee. “Easy, big boy.”
“Are we supposed to be here?” Nooch glanced over his shoulder in the direction Julius had gone. “Aren’t we just supposed to take the stuff we already got?”
“How am I supposed to pay my kid’s tuition bills if I don’t show a little creativity? Besides, they’re blowing up the house tomorrow, right? So whatever’s left behind is going to get destroyed. It’s free for the picking.”
“What if Mr. Hyde comes back?”
“Just go get the handcart.”
“But—”
&nb
sp; “Go!”
With a sigh, Nooch lumbered off to do as he was told, and Roxy patted the statue’s bare butt. “No worries, fella. I’m going to find you a nice new home.”
2
Henry Paxton, attorney-at-law, newly divorced at thirty-five, lived quietly in the former chauffeur’s apartment of Hilltop, the bucolic Pennsylvania estate thirty miles outside of Pittsburgh. The estate had been built by a Pittsburgh steel magnate who died richer than anyone except maybe John Rockefeller. Since then, subsequent Hydes had summered at Hilltop, raised horses, apples, and Charolais cattle in a gentlemanly way, leaving the dirtying of hands to their employees while they partook of the fruits of the estate. They had turned the land around Hilltop into a park the likes of which Capability Brown would have wept over.
For Henry, it was like living in a Merchant-Ivory movie. And while his former fraternity brothers were still sitting in sports bars watching arena football and scoring with pretty waitresses who needed orthodontia, he had found real luxury. And he loved it.
He stayed on the estate thanks to the largesse of his only client, Dorothy Richardson-Hyde, the ninety-two-year-old matriarch of the Hyde family. Conveniently for Henry, Dorothy spent most of her time in a coma in a nursing home, regaining consciousness only now and then to assure her family that the well-being of Hilltop should be entrusted to her lawyer, Henry Paxton, Esq., who didn’t mind dirtying his hands.
The rest of the family resented the arrangement, though, and Henry frequently uncovered evidence of their Machiavellian plots to get him kicked off the premises.
But so far, he’d hung on.
On this Friday evening in October, he had dressed himself for a gala at the nearby country club. Many members brought along their daughters for such evenings—young women who had long, suntanned legs and seemed to be studying art history at European graduate schools. None of the young ladies hung out in sports bars. They were all beautiful, and they were gracious—if a little unimaginative—when bestowing their sexual favors. But it was their parents whose faces lit up when Henry arrived in his evening clothes—a young, eligible, and presumably successful young man who would provide well-behaved grandchildren and vote Republican when the time was right. For the moment, Henry was very popular at the country club.
Upon returning home late that night, he stripped off his dinner jacket. As he unfastened the cuffs on his crisp shirt sleeves, he almost heard the voice of his ex-wife, Pamela.
“You look smooth, Henry.”
He smiled at his reflection. Perhaps the compliment hadn’t been given with sincerity at the time—Pamela had decided to leave him after a series of mistakes including a drunken kiss he’d shared with her best friend, Nikki Viets—but Henry appreciated the word. Smooth. If anything, he endeavored to be smooth in everything he did. Even the less than savory duties.
The phone rang, interrupting the admiration of his reflection.
By habit, he checked the caller ID.
Fair Weather Village. The nursing home where his benefactress currently resided.
Henry winced.
For years, he had braced himself for this phone call. Eventually, Dorothy was going to slip gently into that good night, and the estate would pass into the hands of her moneygrubbing heirs. When that happened, Henry would be tossed out of his happy home. Of course, even if other plans failed to project him into the financial stratosphere, his legal fee for the estate work was going to be enough to buy himself a beach condo in the Caribbean as well as a ski house in Vail—perhaps with one of the long-legged art history students in tow by then—but Henry would be sorry to leave Hilltop.
With regret, he thumbed Tiger Woods off the plasma TV, then sat down in an armchair and picked up the phone. He adjusted his voice to sound both somber and crisply efficient. “Henry Paxton.”
“Paxton? You need to get your ass over here to Fair Weather.”
He recognized the foghorn bellow of that awful woman in charge of Dorothy’s care. One-handed, he opened a fresh can of cashews. “Sharlane? What’s going on?”
“Mrs. Hyde’s awake, that’s what’s goin’ on. And she wants you here on the double.”
“Is she all right?”
“Of course she’s not all right! She’s been in a coma!”
“Is she conscious?” Henry asked.
“How else would she be saying she wants to see you?”
Henry had noticed that Dorothy’s coma seemed to come and go depending on what channel the television in her room was tuned to. In the back of his mind lurked the suspicion that Dorothy wasn’t comatose at all, just biding her time while forming more Byzantine plans.
“Has she been listening to Fox News as I requested, Sharlane?”
A short silence, then an exasperated sigh. “I can stand only so much of that bullshit. And I didn’t want her hearing any local news either, you know? First the fire at her house, and now her son. We heard about Mr. Julius just an hour ago. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Damn shame him dying before his mama.”
“Yes, a tragedy.”
Henry kept his voice pitched professionally. Even the sudden death of Julius Hyde should not rock the estate’s attorney.
“I sure won’t miss him sneaking around here,” Sharlane said. “But there’s no sense her learning about her son getting shot if she can’t do nothing about it. So I changed over to SOAPnet.”
“You probably did the right thing, Sharlane.”
“Thank you.” Then Sharlane’s defensive shield snapped back into place. “You get yourself over here pronto, slick. You know how impatient she is.”
Henry did indeed. He drove to the nursing home in record time and found Dorothy Hyde sitting up in the bed in her private room. Fresh flowers stood on a table, as Henry had ordered. Civilities must be observed. An antique rug lay on the linoleum floor beside the defibrillator. Keeping his client alive as well as happy was Henry’s priority.
And tonight, he hoped the news of her son’s demise would not necessitate the use of the defibrillator.
“I want champagne,” she said as soon as she saw him in his evening clothes. “That silly nurse thinks it will interfere with my medications. Why does she imagine I’m asking for some, if not to interfere with all these damn medications?”
“Mrs. Hyde, it’s a pleasure to see you looking so well.”
The old woman’s arthritis-deformed hand traveled instinctively to her hair, which was snow white and flowed around the shoulders of her embroidered nightgown. “You’re a silver-tongued devil, Henry. All my granddaughters say so. You’re not trying to marry any of them, are you?”
Of course Henry had thought of marrying into the Hyde family, but all of Dorothy’s anorexic granddaughters were obsessed with shopping or obscure subjects that bored him silly. None of them could possibly be worth the thirty million that came along with her. No, Henry had better plans in mind.
He placed the day’s Wall Street Journal on Dorothy Hyde’s bedside table. Then he set his briefcase on the edge of her bed and popped the latches. “I didn’t bring champagne. Considering the season, I thought you might prefer a nice Pinot Noir.”
He drew the bottle from the case and showed her the label. His selection had come from her very own cellar, which Henry kept fully stocked and rotated to avoid any wine aging past its prime. It was one of many responsibilities he took very seriously.
Dorothy wore a set of gold-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck, and she lifted the lenses to her eyes to read the label.
“Chilean! Have you been speculating on my behalf again, Henry?” She tapped the bottle with one long, gnarled finger. “This is the primary reason I keep you on retainer, you know. Your good taste in wine.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hyde. May I pour?”
She handed him a plastic cup from the bedside table and sat back against her pillows to watch as he managed the cork. “What have I missed?” she asked. “Everybody here is tippy-toeing around like somebody died. Are you
going to break the bad news, or do I have to hire myself another attorney?”
“Can’t we just be happy you’re so alert?” Henry asked.
He found himself surprisingly pleased, in fact, to see Dorothy’s pert face and button blue eyes glaring at him with such vitality. She had aristocratic features—a long nose and pointed chin carved out of alabaster skin—but the sharpness of her gaze was anything but refined. And several weeks of deep sleep seemed to have invigorated her.
“Who’s gone?” she demanded. “One of my daughters? It’s Patricia, isn’t it? She drinks too much. I told her time and time again—”
“It’s not Patricia.”
“Who, then?”
Henry passed the wine into Dorothy’s hand, careful to support it until he was sure her grip was strong enough to hold the cup. “I’m sorry to tell you, Mrs. Hyde, that Julius has passed away.”
“Julius! Finally got himself shot by a jealous husband, did he?” Her voice remained gruff, but Dorothy suddenly appeared to need a sip of wine. She swallowed carefully, then rested her head against the pillow and looked at the ceiling. “He was a sweet boy, my Julius. In his middle years, I thought he might enjoy collecting something or running the family foundation. But, no.”
Julius’s only interest in the family foundation, Henry suspected, had been how quickly it might be dismantled upon his mother’s death.
“And then he started marrying over and over. That was the beginning of the end for him. The start of his debaucheries. Who was the lucky wife when the music stopped? Who gets a whopping share of my assets?”
“Monica.”
“Oh, yes. The philanthropy queen. She was trying to polish up his image, last I heard, by being charitable with my money.” Dorothy sat straight again. “Has he been buried yet? There was no awful press, was there?”
Henry cleared his throat. “We’ll have little control over that, I’m sorry to say. The circumstances—”
“Good heavens, he didn’t really get himself shot, did he?”
“He did,” Henry replied solemnly. “It happened earlier this evening. Just a few hours ago. Someone shot him, and he died instantly. He didn’t suffer, Mrs. Hyde.”
