How to Murder a Millionaire (12 page)

"The Viagra obviously had a purpose. We thought
maybe he was seeing somebody younger and, you know, trying to keep up."

The idea seemed fantastic to me. But Bloom was certainly correct in assuming Rory hadn't acquired the Viagra for any purpose but the one for which it was intended.

"I don't know the answers to your questions. Did Rory's secretary get back in town?" I asked. "Surely he has the best grasp of Rory's private life."

"He arrives today. But he warned us that Rory kept his private business to himself. So I'm back to hoping you thought of something else. Or remembered something that's been going on in Pendergast's life lately."

"We were friends, but I was hardly his confidante," I said. "I really don't know what else I can tell you."

"Maybe you could ask around a little?" he said, sounding a little too innocent to be unscripted. "Talk to some of the people in his social circle? Find out what he'd been up to? There's some kind of code of silence among you people, and we're having a hard time making headway."

You people.
Well, if gathering gossip meant Peach was in the clear, I was willing to stoop pretty low. I said, "I'm going out tonight, as a matter of fact. Rory's bound to be the primary topic of conversation."

"It'd be great if you could pick up some information for us," said Bloom. "I mean, if you happen to hear something we might find useful. Where are you headed?"

"To a couple of parties in the city."

"You going with anyone?"

I tried to decide from his tone what exactly he was asking. "No," I said. "I'm working."

"Oh." More slowly, he said, "When you went off last night with Abruzzo, I wondered, that's all."

"My driver works for him," I explained. "And he had to go home—the driver, that is, because I stayed so late. So Mr. Abruzzo relieved him. It wasn't anything more than that."

"Uh-huh," said Bloom. "You know who he is, right? I mean, maybe he's not in the family business, if you know what I mean—not that we can prove, anyway. But he sure knows where the bodies are buried."

"Really," I said, "we're barely acquainted."

"I just wondered." He didn't sound convinced. "What time did he arrive at Pendergast's last night?"

"I have no idea."

"Was it before Pendergast died?"

"He came to pick me up. That's all I know."

"Do you know if he had a relationship with Pendergast?"

A sharp pang began to twinge at my conscience. "Why don't you ask him?"

"He's on my list," Bloom said.

"Well, good," I said.

Bloom said, "I shouldn't be telling you this, but considering—well, I just think you ought to know that Pendergast's phone has Caller ID. And the last number that came in . . ."

"Yes?"

"Was Abruzzo's."

I felt my lungs empty. It was a struggle to summon speech. "The threatening phone call."

"Bingo."

Half a minute might have ticked by. The detective let me digest the information. It stunned me.

So did the fact that Bloom was telling me what should have been classified information. I didn't peg Bloom for an incompetent cop. He'd informed me for
a reason. He wanted me to see what I could learn from Michael Abruzzo.

"Well," I said, still absorbing the shock and unwilling to respond to the unspoken request, "I should be getting dressed right now."

"I'm sure you'll look great," said Bloom, almost automatically. Which sealed it for me. His whole friendly routine was just that—a routine. He said, "I'll be in touch, though, okay?"

"Anytime."

"Okay." He lingered another moment. "Uhm, thanks."

"Sure."

I hung up. He was using me, all right. I wouldn't have minded if he hadn't been so obvious. Did he think I was a dolt?

I dialed the number Eloise Tackett had given me for Jonathan Longnecker, Rory's former art agent. It was a cell phone, and the automated recording that picked up told me he was unavailable. I decided against leaving a voice mail and disconnected.

With the handset still to my ear, I considered calling Abruzzo. He had threatened Rory Pendergast perhaps within minutes of Rory's death. What was that about?

I chickened out and hung up the phone without dialing.

Promptly at five-thirty, Reed Shakespeare arrived at my door. I had dressed carefully in another one of Grandmama's couture dresses, this one lemon yellow with a wide obi-style belt in a slightly more vivid hue. It had a stand-up collar, no sleeves and a low back. Elegant, simple. Chanel. I carried a beaded bag I'd also dug out of a trunk that must have come from one of Grandmama's Caribbean tours.

Reed took one look at the ensemble and blanched.

"You don't like it?" I asked, turning so he could get the complete view.

He shrugged and opened the rear door of the town car, looking off into the distance. "Not for me to say."

The hell with him. Maybe I was a fashion throwback to Jackie Kennedy, but I wasn't comfortable in the belly button flash of teenybopper fashion or the hard-edged sex of the stiletto feminists. I felt pretty and that's what counted when going off to a party.

I got into the car. While he drove into the city, I started writing the pieces I needed to turn in at the newspaper that evening. Stan and Kitty would review my work in the wee hours of Sunday morning and choose what would be published on
The Back Page.
Kitty's pieces would be our lead stories, of course. She attended the A-list events. My pieces would fill in here and there, since I covered the less exciting side of the social scene. Photographs of beautiful people attending important parties usually balanced out the space.

Tonight, I knew, Kitty was scheduled to attend an event at the Ritz-Carlton. Hundreds of the city's most moneyed and influential people were paying a thousand dollars a ticket to enjoy cocktails, dinner and entertainment while rubbing elbows with an aged movie star who would make an after-dinner speech about his long movie career. His speech would be full of anecdotes about other actors, directors and celebrities, giving the appreciative dinner crowd an impression they were tight with half of Hollywood. Afterwards there would be dancing and opportunities for the locals to have their picture taken with the movie star. After paying the actor and the hotel, the sponsoring organization donated the rest of the ticket
money to a local school for the arts. A good cause and fun for many people, but it would have been Dullsville for me. I knew Kitty would lap it up, though, and her column would include an interview with the movie star.

I didn't mind being sent across town to a warehouse where a Philadelphia law firm was throwing a party to kick off a weekend of wheelchair racing. They'd taken up the cause after one of their partners had been injured in a car accident and ended up a paraplegic.

"I don't do wheelchairs," Kitty had told me.

Fine. I did.

The party was a humdinger, and I knew it as soon as I got out of the car. New Orleans zydeco blasted me, and I decided no music was more danceable than zydeco. Reed held the car door open, but goggled at five extremely beautiful girls in hot dresses dancing in front of the warehouse doorway. One girl in cornrows spun a wheelie that flipped her skirt up over a lovely pair of knees. She caught Reed's eye with an enticing laugh.

"Better give me an hour," I told Reed. "Want me to get your hand stamped so you can hang around?"

"No," he said, although he shot a longing glance at the dancers. "I've got studying to do."

"Okay, but the good times are gonna roll without you, Reed."

I slithered my way through the mob, unconsciously bobbing to the music and happily wishing Kitty a good time with the senior citizen movie star. This party was definitely more my style. A local microbrewery had partnered with the law firm, and free beer flowed from kegs set up strategically around the warehouse. I could smell spicy food in the air and saw guests eating red
beans and rice from paper plates. The crowd was mostly young and definitely stunning—all dressed with sass and panache appropriate for a hot good time. At least one of the Philadelphia 76ers stood head and shoulders above the other guests, graciously signing autographs.

I found my contact, the law firm's PR director, who gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked me to dance. As we two-stepped, he filled me in on the particulars.

"We invited two hundred guests, plus the race entrants and their families," he shouted over the music. "Carmella's did the food, and you can talk to Jerry about the beer. Want to meet some of the racers?"

"Of course! And Tom Nelson, too."

Tom had been an acquaintance of mine from a pre-teen ballroom dance class, and although he was confined to a wheelchair after his accident, he could still dance, I was delighted to see. He spun me around for a few turns, while I clumsily tried to get the hang of dancing with a seated partner. He didn't seem to mind my stumbling, but we soon quit and I interviewed him in a relatively quiet corner.

His accident and resulting physical changes had done wonders for Tom Nelson, I decided after we'd talked for a few minutes. In the past, he'd basically been a jerk with no time for anybody but his drinking buddies. Now he seemed more relaxed, more witty, more focused on other people. I was glad to meet his new wife, too, a charming young woman with a glint of pride in her eyes when her husband talked about the upcoming races and the competition the firm had started for teens.

"Racing has been fabulous for Tom," she said when I asked her for a quote. "It's given him back his
edge—not just his edge for work, but for his whole life."

It was a terrific quote and I could have left the party then with sufficient information for a great story, but I needed to wait around for the photographer who'd been assigned to the event. When Jason arrived, I asked him to take pictures of the Nelsons and some of the racers, who cheerfully posed with the brewmaster and the pretty girl in the wheelchair. Jason wrote down names and left for his next assignment, but I wanted to enjoy the evening a little, so I had some fiery jambalaya and a Dixie longneck with a trio of racers and chatted with a few friends who'd come out for an evening of fun.

Then Tom came over to talk again.

"How are your parents?" he asked.

"I haven't heard from them in weeks," I reported. "But I assume they're alive and well."

He grinned up at me. "I'm not trying to track them down, honest. I was just asking. I heard you were at the Pendergast party last night."

I nodded. "It was awful. We're all going to miss him."

"Not everyone," he replied wryly. "First thing this morning I got a preemptive phone call from one of his sisters. What do you know about them?"

"I only met them last night, actually. They were upset, of course."

I could say no more without gossiping, and he couldn't say anything else without violating attorney-client privilege, so that was the end of it. He changed the subject and left me wondering why the Pendergast sisters were contacting lawyers. Had they started to divide up the estate already?

The party was still going strong when I left. I congratulated everyone on the success of the bash and wished several racers good luck. Then I went out to find Reed and the car.

Half an hour later I walked into my second event of the evening, another of Kitty's rejects. Usually Kitty grabbed the chance to attend parties on Society Hill, but Hollywood's call was stronger than politics.

Society Hill was one of the city's poshest addresses, with leafy streets, beautifully preserved architecture and millionaire neighbors. The townhouses were packed snugly together, and the families were equally tight. It was said that any couple who dated from outside a two-block area were contemplating a mixed marriage.

Political fundraisers weren't my cup of tea either, but I knew many of the guests who milled outside the townhouse of Molly Irwin and Jack Hardy. Molly wrote a liberal-minded column for the rival newspaper in the city, and her lawyer husband, Jack, often helped local Democrats load up their war chests. Their house sported a large American flag that waved from a second-floor window.

Upstairs in the beautifully decorated second-floor living room, the party hummed with excitement. I had arrived just moments after the mayor, I realized, and he was holding court in front of Molly's Waterford and Wedgwood-laden breakfront.

The mayor hadn't been out in public for weeks. The whole city had speculated he'd been contemplating a big career change as a result of an unusual political blunder—a flat denial of bribery in his office just days before subpoenas were delivered. He was a flamboyant man, given to drinking a little more than he should
and making statements in public that were better off left to his prudent PR staff. I had overheard reporters in the
Intelligencer
coffee room wondering if his fondness for alcohol had begun affecting his previously uncanny political instincts.

I met Molly's gaze across the room. Her brows shot up; then she immediately frowned. She murmured an apology to the mayor, who kept on talking to the other guests as she slipped away from the group.