Murder Melts in Your Mouth (6 page)

“Yes, I'm afraid so.”

She took an unsteady breath, but fought down the urge to weep. A proud aristocrat, she took command of her feelings. “You're very pretty these days, Nora. You look so much like your grandmother.”

“I—thank you.”

“Although maybe you should consider a frosted lipstick. Don't you love a frosted mouth in hot weather? Aren't you working for a newspaper these days?” Tears trembled on her false eyelashes.

“Yes, I took over Kitty Keough's social column for the
Intelligencer
. I report on charity events, mostly.”

“Why, yes, I saw you at that measles gala last April. Why don't you come to lunch someday, dear? I could use the publicity. I'm launching a new spa line this week.”

“Well—”

“At lunch tomorrow, Hoyt and I were going to announce our—dear me,” she said, tearing up again. “I'm not making much sense, am I? Could you get me a glass of water, dear?”

“Certainly. Will you be all right if I leave you alone?”

“Of course,” she said, abruptly calm again. “A sip of water will put me right.”

As accustomed as I was to handling the eccentric women in my own unpredictable family, I wondered fleetingly if Elena was trying to pull a fast one. But I dutifully dashed down the hallway to the bathroom once again and ran a splash of water into a cut-crystal glass.

When I returned, however, Elena Zanzibar was nowhere to be seen.

Detective Wylcnck was herding the staff of the Paine Investment Group into the boardroom. The detective stopped each individual at the door and jotted his or her name in a black notebook. She caught sight of me as I tried to slip past her.

“You again.” She pointed her pen at me. “Do you work here? Or are you a customer?”

“Neither, actually. I'm a friend of Miss Paine.”

Her glare intensified. “So this is a social call?”

“Sort of. Look, I seem to have lost Mrs. Zanzibar.”

Wylcnck snapped her notebook shut. “Where'd the old broad go? Oh, hell, why do I get stuck with all old ladies who think they're above the law? She's probably waiting for an elevator. Stay here. Don't move.”

The detective hurried off in the direction of the elevators.

As soon as she was out of sight, I disobeyed. I rushed back to the closet and yanked open the door, hoping to help my father make his getaway.

But the closet was empty.

Where in the world had he gotten to? And how?

Chapter Five

B
y the time the police got fed up and dismissed me, my editor had left the
Intelligencer
offices for an appointment to get his annual colonoscopy. So I sat at my desk for a few minutes to pull myself together.

The whole afternoon seemed a blur of one awful encounter after another. And the mental image of Hoyt's lifeless body on the city sidewalk was going to give me many sleepless nights. I flipped on my computer to check my e-mail, but the words danced in front of me without meaning. Except the terse message from my editor telling me to phone him first thing in the morning.

I guessed my job was still in jeopardy.

But I couldn't think. Couldn't work. I kept flashing back to the grisly scene on the sidewalk. And Lexie's cold and shaken anger. Elena's ditzy confusion. Brandi's twisted vocabulary. I tried to sort all the snail mail invitations that had been delivered to the office, but I was too distracted to make many decisions. I placed two phone calls to respond to the most pressing invitations and used the computer to e-mail several more RSVPs. One invitation came with a box of cookies. I sampled one, then put the box in the break room to share with my colleagues. Unable to concentrate properly, I finally stuffed the rest of the envelopes into my handbag and called my driver for a ride home.

My original employment contract—dictated by an old family friend who owned the newspaper—allowed me the services of a town car with driver. In the first few weeks on the job, I took it for granted that other reporters enjoyed the same luxury, but I was quickly hooted at. Now I used the car very rarely. I figured I was due a quiet ride home tonight.

Reed Shakespeare, part-time student and part-time driver, preferred to keep his own counsel. Early in our relationship, I'd tried to draw him out, but he made his preference for silence known. I still thought he didn't like driving around a gussied-up white woman who went to a lot of fancy parties. But I'd also come to realize he was simply shy.

In the backseat of the town car, I remembered Tierney Cavendish racing down the stairs of the Paine Building. I was certain he hadn't managed to reach his father in time for a final good-bye. Then, oddly enough, I wondered if Tierney had been in the room when Hoyt went off the balcony.

And Daddy? He had been close by, too.

My stomach rolled over at that thought.

By the time we reached Blackbird Farm, I had a thumping headache.

Despite the blissful cool of the car's air-conditioning, I felt sticky when I got out of the car. I thanked Reed and I went into the house hoping to draw myself a bubble bath to help forget about the day's trauma.

Instead, I found my teenage nephew Rawlins sitting at the kitchen table and feeding his baby brother a bottle of formula. The two of them were a sight for sore eyes.

Rawlins frowned at the screen of my laptop computer. The teenager had gotten a buzz haircut and wore a clean T-shirt advertising the ice-cream parlor where he worked for the summer. In an obvious effort to join the working world, he'd even removed his eyebrow stud and nose ring. Only one hoop earring remained from his once extensive collection of body piercings.

I ran my hand across the boot camp coiffure. “
Semper Fi
, Rawlins.”

“Hey, Aunt Nora. Sorry, but I can't fix your computer. It's really fried this time.”

I dropped my handbag onto a chair. “Just like the rest of my life.”

He grinned. “I guess you don't want to hear the plumber quit, too, then?”

I groaned at the news. “No, thanks. Did your mom call you? She was discharged from the hospital and went straight to the Ritz-Carlton.”

“Nope, she didn't call.” Rawlins seemed unfazed by the lack of communication in his family. “But that's cool. Who's she staying with?”

Although Rawlins appeared to accept the possibility that his mother wasn't alone that evening, it didn't feel right to speculate on Libby's latest conquest with any of her children.

In all honesty, I said, “I haven't a clue.”

Rawlins leaned closer to me and sniffed. “What's that smell? If I didn't know better, Aunt Nora, I'd say you were smoking a fat one today.”

I flushed, remembering my father. “I did no such thing. And how do you know what marijuana smells like?”

He laughed. “I'm in high school, that's why.”

From under the kitchen table came Toby, the Brittany spaniel we had inherited a couple of months back. The shy dog had attached himself to my sister Emma, but in her absence, he greeted me with a wagging tail and a cold nose on my kneecap. I fondled his silky ears and found myself thankful not to be alone this evening. Hoyt Cavendish's death, Libby's brush with mortality, Emma's hormonal news bulletin, my father's inopportune homecoming—all at a time when I was feeling emotionally delicate—it was too much to bear in an empty house.

“You okay, Aunt Nora?”

“I feel better every minute.” I smiled at my nephews. “Thanks for trying to fix my laptop, Rawlins. Where's the rest of the crew? Did you get any dinner?”

“I got takeout for everybody from Boston Market. You'd be proud—we even had green beans. There's an extra meat loaf dinner in the fridge, if you want it.” My nephew hooked his head in the direction of the living room. “Lucy's sacked out on the sofa with her imaginary friend. And the twins are out in the barn doing their homework.”

“Homework? In July?”

His twin brothers, fourteen-year-old Harcourt and Hilton, were a pair of budding psychopaths whose activities in my barn were probably better left uninvestigated. But with his free hand, Rawlins tossed me a printed brochure.

I read the large print on the brochure's colorful cover. “An online mortuary school?”

“The twins got their first assignment this morning.”

“Heaven help us,” I said, meaning it.

“They haven't enrolled yet. They're supposed to complete some kind of aptitude test first.”

“If anyone has an aptitude for death, it's your brothers. No offense.”

“Hey,” Rawlins said with a shrug, “if they're interested in embalming, I'm just glad they're seeking professional guidance.”

I read aloud from the brochure. “Our graduates learn to think outside the box.”

Rawlins laughed. “Who writes that stuff?”

“Good grief!”

“Let's hope the curriculum is better than the PR.”

I gave him a long look over the top of the brochure. “You're very forgiving of the twins, Rawlins. Weren't you the one they wanted to practice on when they weaseled their way into that phlebotomy course?”

“I'm a fast runner. Anyway, their assignment is to find some animal bones to work with, so they're digging out in the barn.”

“There aren't any bones in the barn.”

“I think they're looking for dead mice or something. Then they boil off the skin and—”

“Mice, I have,” I said dolefully. “Plenty of mice. Just don't tell me what happens to them.”

He pointed at the kitchen counter. “The plumber left you a Dear John letter.”

“I suppose that's better than a bill.” Before I dared to read the plumber's note, I found a bottle of Excedrin and popped two tablets.

“He forgot his wrench, though, so maybe he'll be back.”

“I doubt it.”

I ran a glass of tap water and sipped it as I picked up the piece of paper left on the counter beside an industrial-sized wrench. The plumber gently informed me that the leak under the kitchen sink was only the tip of a very large iceberg. It was more than he could fix, and he suggested I contact a company that specialized in expensive historic restorations—a company that had already given me estimates big enough to revitalize New Orleans.

I sighed. My household emergencies were always more than I could fix. Some of them—like the leaking gutter over the library—were never going to be repaired unless an incredibly wealthy software magnate chose Blackbird Farm as the recipient of his endless financial support.

Rawlins watched my face. “The plumber seemed real sorry.”

I tossed the note onto the table and affected nonchalance. “I have that effect on repairmen.”

Baby Maximus finished off his bottle and gave it a barefoot kick. “Da!”

Rawlins obligingly heaved the pudgy infant onto his shoulder.

I said, “Your mom says she's trying to improve your baby brother's chances of getting into the Ivy League.”

“Yeah, she told me. I'm supposed to chant the periodic table to him. Trouble is, I never learned the periodic table myself.
C'est la vie
, huh?”

There had been a time when Rawlins suffered from all the worst characteristics of teenagers. For a long time, he'd been sullen and uncommunicative and entirely lacking in humor. But he'd grown up lately, and I was happy to see him so relaxed and confident. Of all my immediate family members, he was the closest to an adult, and I was going to miss him terribly next year when he went off to college.

Rawlins handed over a sticky plastic gizmo. “Here's his binky. Don't let it out of your sight or he has a tantrum.”

“But your mother said—”

“Yeah, I know what she says. But she lets him have it all the time. She wants somebody else to train him not to need it.”

I washed the plastic pacifier with soap and hot water at the sink. “Are you going to stay in tonight? Or do you have a date?”

Rawlins might have blushed as he patted Maximus on his back. “Well, I thought I'd cruise back into town. You know, to see if anyone wants to hang out.”

I reached for the baby and gathered him up in my arms. Max was a hot, sticky bundle, and his shock of black hair was plastered to his head. He yawned in my face and let out a soft burp.

“How's Shawna?” I asked.

At the mention of his girlfriend, Rawlins pretended an intense interest in the empty formula bottle. “She's—you know, getting ready to go to school.”

“Will you keep seeing her once she gets to college? Or are you two going to give each other a little space?”

Rawlins shrugged. “I dunno.”

Rawlins had been seeing an older woman—a girl who planned to go to college in a few weeks, leaving my nephew behind to finish his last year of high school unencumbered.

He stretched his arms over his head and put a spin of manly stoicism on the situation. “I'm kinda hooking up with this new girl. Regan. She works at the ice-cream shop.”

“Oh, really? Is she nice?”

He shrugged again. “She's okay. But she calls me on my cell phone all the time. Even when we're at work. She sends me text messages when we're standing, like, ten feet apart.”

“What does she text about?”

Another shrug. “Nothing much. She wants to know where I am every minute. I mean, is it a crime to want to take a leak undisturbed once in a while?”

Sorry I'd brought up a sore subject, I said, “Well, come back here tonight, okay? I don't want to lie awake wondering if you've driven yourself over a cliff. When's your curfew?”

“Mom doesn't care when I get home.”

I poked his shoulder. “I doubt that. How about midnight?”

“Sure, okay.”

While balancing Maximus on my shoulder, I rooted an extra house key from a drawer. “By any chance you didn't see Emma this evening, did you?”

“Nope.”

“I wonder if she bothered to feed her ponies.”

Rawlins heard my tone. “There's plenty of grass.”

“What about water?”

“I checked. The barrel is full.”

I eyed him. “Did she ask you to do her chores?”

“Nope, I just checked the water, that's all.”

With some irritation, I noticed Emma had gotten her riding school off to a rocky start, then departed without letting anyone know what to do in her absence. Her job at the Chocolate Festival was more lucrative, perhaps, but we were left looking after her livestock.

But, of course, I was really concerned about the latest development in her life. If she couldn't take care of her animals, how was she going to raise a child?

“It only takes a minute to check their water,” Rawlins said, watching my expression. “They're out in the pasture eating their heads off. No big deal.” He dropped the house key into the pocket of his loose khaki shorts. “They'll be okay. Don't worry so much, okay? Everything's cool.”

Everything was not cool.

But I decided not to tell him about Emma's big news. Or Hoyt Cavendish's gruesome death. Rawlins's needy girlfriend was probably enough stress to cope with in his young life.

After Rawlins gave me a peck on the cheek and shambled out the back door, I checked my answering machine to see if Emma had left any messages. Nothing. If she'd decided to do something about her pregnancy right away, she wasn't letting me in on her plan.

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