How to Murder a Millionaire (23 page)

"Tch, tch," said another committee member. "They look happy as larks, don't they? And their dear brother barely cold in his grave."

Chapter 17

My friend Lexie Paine knew how to throw a party. First of all, she had a great time herself.

"Darling!" she cried, throwing her arms around me. "You poor dear, what a trial. A trial! You must have a drink. What will you have? Anything but red wine. Somebody always stains my carpet when I serve red wine, so I've sworn off. Name your poison. Please don't make me drink alone."

"You're having Perrier, aren't you?"

"Well, yes." She waggled her empty martini glass. "But I have to keep up appearances. Are you totally whacked, sweetie? If you are, it doesn't show a bit. Not a bit. You look absurdly gorgeous. Love the duds."

Lexie, of course, looked deceptively delicate in a black slip dress that matched her sleek black hair. But her square shoulders belied hours of paddling her kayak on the river, and the warrior's gleam in her eye bespoke a keen intelligence that made her a financial whiz. Good thing, too, since she'd inherited a truckload of money when her investment banker father passed away a decade earlier. She'd made partner in her father's old financial firm by age thirty and looked to be on her way to running the show when his contemporaries cashed in their portfolios. The museum had begged her to join their board, and she had the
right combination of money smarts and good taste to help lead that institution to even greater heights.

Plus she was a hoot.

She linked her arm with mine and ducked her head furtively close. "I hear you're taking no prisoners as Kitty Keough's protegee. Is it kill or be killed? Pistols at dawn? Death by—oh, heavens. I'm sorry. What am I babbling about?"

"It's okay. A little gallows humor is just what I need."

Lexie lived along Boathouse Row, the stretch of picturesque Victorian boathouses built by private rowing clubs that still sculled the river in shells and conducted colorful regattas. The turrets and gables of the old houses were almost as picturesque as the scads of handsome athletes who decorated the riverscape on weekends and evenings. A lover of the water, Lexie bought a boathouse that had fallen into disrepair and she was living on the upper floors in renovated splendor. She had swooped into Pottery Barn one afternoon for simple, disposable furniture, but the walls were adorned with truly beautiful works of art from the collection of her mother, a woman of discerning taste and double fortune after remarrying an Argentinean named Helmut.

My favorite painting in the boathouse depicted a black-haired woman who had thrown herself in naked abandon on a heap of golden pirate treasure and luxuriated in the riches.

Lexie said, "I want to hear about everything. The rumors are rampant, darling. Did you really find poor Rory? Are the police using rubber hoses? And what's this about a man you're seeing? I mean, finally, dear! Finally!"

"What man?"

"Someone saw you with a veritable blacksmith, sweetie. A linebacker. A longshoreman! Shoulders out to here." Lexie threw her arms extravagantly wide. "I can't wait to hear the gory details."

"There is no gore, especially not in public," I said, glancing around the crowd that lolled on her sofas and eyed me with frank curiosity over their drinks. "It's not nearly as exciting as you imagine. In fact, it's a little scary."

"Oh, how delicious."

"Listen, Lex, I need to find somebody tonight, and I thought he might be here with your museum friends. Jonathan Longnecker. Do you know him?"

"Know him? Not in the Biblical sense, of course, since he's purely the other persuasion." Lexie popped her dark eyes wide in mock despair. "I hope he's not your blacksmith. He hardly qualifies."

"No, no, I just need to talk to him."

Lexie saw my expression and got serious in a hurry. "Why, honey, are you all right? What's wrong?"

My friend's immediate concern caused my throat to clog up. "It's Libby. She's done something stupid, and I'm trying to figure out what before she ends up— well, you know Libby."

"Yes, I do," said Lexie. "She's done some work for the museum, you know. She has a talent for restoration. I think she'd have a future in the biz if she weren't such a ditz."

"I know. She's created a real mess this time."

"Can I help?"

Lexie, with her connections to the museum, had a lot to lose if she became entangled in a scandal. I said, "I'll talk to Longnecker first. Maybe he can tell me what I need to know."

"If you think so." She looked doubtful. "He's a jerk, you know."

"I'll run up a flag if I need help."

She gave me a hug and took me out to the balcony that overlooked the river. A heavy smell rolled in off the water, as if rain were on the way.

Jonathan Longnecker was nuzzling the neck of a college boy. He looked up, annoyed at our interruption, then realized who we were and straightened in a flash.

"Jonathan," said Lexie, "Nora is my friend. Play nice or I'll cut you off at the knees. Come with me," she said, crooking her forefinger at the boy. "I'll get you another Pepsi."

With Lexie's daunting power and influence backing me up, I seemed to have gained a few respect points in Longnecker's mind. But he wasn't ready to be completely nice to me. So he sulked. "So?" he asked. "Where's your goon?"

"Truce," I said, going to the railing beside him. "If we could go to neutral corners for a minute, we might both benefit."

He raised one eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest in the pose of a suave matinee double agent. "What does that mean?"

"I need to know about Rory Pendergast's relationship with Harold and Eloise Tackett."

"The three amigos? What do I get if I tell you anything?"

"A little closer to your Chinese folio."

His gaze flicked towards the house where Lexie's voice rose in laughter at someone's joke. He said, "I'm listening."

"Rory collected the same kind of art that Harold does, right?"

"The sexy stuff? Yeah."

"And they competed for the same pieces from time to time."

"So?"

I pinned him with a look. "If you were working as an agent for both of them, I suppose you might have offered the same pieces to both Harold and Rory."

"It wasn't unethical," Longnecker said quickly. "The pieces always went to the highest bidder."

With quite a bit of encouragement from Longnecker, I supposed, who stood to make his commission on the sale no matter what. The higher the price, of course, the higher the commission.

"And the folio?" I asked. "Did you offer it to both of them? I can ask Harold for the truth, you know."

"Then why don't you?"

I took a deep breath. "Because I'd rather hear it from you and keep the matter between us."

His gaze sharpened on me as he realized I was offering to keep my mouth closed about his business practices. "Okay," he said slowly. "Maybe I mentioned the folio to Harold. But it turned out to be useless. Pendergast fell hard and wanted to keep it. Once the folio was off the market, there was no sense teasing Tackett. Actually, I felt sorry for the old guy."

"You're all heart. Harold wanted the folio badly?"

"He practically drooled. It would have been a nice cornerstone for his collection. And I told him so. The folio would have elevated his stuff into a collection that would interest a museum. That got to him." Longnecker dimpled at the memory. "He started talking about leaving his collection to an institution someday. Even his wife got into the act."

"What do you mean?"

Longnecker looked at his manicure. "She called me
herself asking if I could try again with Rory. She upped their offer by another million. But I said it was a lost cause."

I saw something smug in his expression. "Do you think she really gave up?"

"I know she didn't."

"How?"

Pausing for dramatic effect, Longnecker finally said, "I saw her the night Pendergast died. She went in to talk to him."

I caught my breath. "You saw her? Upstairs?"

Longnecker considered me. "Are you really going to keep your trap shut? I'm on the brink of my dream job right now. I don't want to screw that up."

"Give me more incentive. I gather you didn't tell the police that Eloise was in the upstairs corridor?"

"I may have forgotten to mention it."

"Did you tell the police anything about the folio? Do they know it exists?"

"They didn't hear about it from me. Look, Pendergast was supposed to give the folio to the Reese-Goldman, but he wouldn't let it go. When I figured out he'd given it to your sister for repair, I had hopes she and I could come to terms about my taking it without getting Rory involved. I mean, I have the letter he wrote promising to give it to us. I need the folio now for an exhibit. It'll make my career. It's only fair."

"Sounds like you had motive to kill him yourself."

"Oh, please." He shivered. "Who would want to touch that old guy?"

"So you thought you could convince Libby to hand it over. Just like that?"

"It was worth a shot. As soon as the Pendergast sisters know about the folio, they're going to lock it
up tight. It'll take years of litigation to wrestle it out of their claws."

I wasn't so sure. The Pendergast sisters might be very happy to get rid of an item they considered offensive. The faster, the better.

I said, "Did anyone besides you see Eloise Tackett on the staircase?"

"She didn't come up the staircase. Colonel Mustard must have a secret passageway through the conservatory or something because I know she didn't use the stairs."

The elevator. Or the kitchen staircase. Chances were good Eloise had known Rory's house almost as well as her own. She'd been in his social circle for years, and as his mistress she wouldn't have needed a Clue game board to know about secret avenues in the Pendergast mansion.

I asked, "When she talked to him that night, did you hear them together?"

"I'm no eavesdropper," Longnecker said virtuously. "I just know she went in to dicker with Pendergast. She'd given up on money. She was going to offer him a trade."

"A trade?"

"She handed me drivel about having something Pendergast would want more than anything, even the folio."

Sex, I wondered? If she'd been his mistress, why would he want to trade the folio for something he'd been enjoying all along? Why buy the cow, as my grandmother used to preach, when he could have the milk for free?

Or was it the Viagra? Had Eloise planned to trade her husband's prescription for the priceless Zhejiang Folio?

All the details of various geriatric sexual relationships began to swim in my brain. I leaned against the balcony railing.

"You okay?" Longnecker asked.

"Yes."

"I know what you're thinking," Longnecker said. "Maybe I should have told the police about old lady Tackett being up there. But I have a clear conscience. I wasn't the only one who saw her."

I must have jumped. "Who else did?"

He smiled, pleased to have startled me. "Lots of people. Mrs. Treese, for one. A waitress, too, but maybe that was earlier. Oh, and that crazy woman from the newspaper, what's her name? She was up there for a few minutes, but she blasted off like a rocket after yelling at Pendergast for a while. And there was your sister, of course."

I felt my head go light, and I clutched the balcony railing.

"That's when I first asked her for the folio," Longnecker went on. "In the corridor outside Pendergast's room while he talked to Eloise Tackett."

"What was Libby doing up there?"

He shrugged dismissively. "Who knows?"

"Did you tell the police she was there?"

"Hell, no. I'm still hoping to get the folio from her."

"Did she— Why was she there?"

"I told you, I dunno. We talked about the folio, and she acted surprised that it was worth as much as it was. And when I offered her the finder's fee—"

"The what?"

"You heard me. I figured the best way to get the folio was to offer a bounty. A finder's fee. You know, to get the folio back to its rightful home."

"How much?" I asked, hardly able to summon my voice.

"I offered her a hundred thousand dollars."

I swallowed hard. "Did she take it?"

"Not yet," said Longnecker. "But she can have it the minute I get my hands on the folio."

A sudden wind blew it off the dark river, and the rain started to come down hard.

Chapter 18

At Blackbird Farm, Reed Shakespeare had insisted on escorting me inside the house. Boss's orders, he'd told me. He stood looking at the remaining mess that I hadn't managed to clean up before leaving earlier in the day. I had piled the pieces of broken chairs beside the refrigerator. An open cardboard carton of books sat on the kitchen table. Two black plastic trash bags full of rubbish were still on the floor where Emma had left them. She had not hauled anything away in her truck, as she'd promised.