Inherit the Dead (7 page)

As he drove down the private road back toward the highway, Perry mentally replayed his interview with Loki, the aging,
de
pendently wealthy hipster. A bit of a poser, a big doper, but a kidnapper? A killer? Hard to believe. Then again, how could a lawyer not know about his own daughter’s inheritance? And if he did know, why lie about it?

Perry sighed as he turned onto the empty highway. The interview that was supposed to give him a central piece of the puzzle had instead only delivered more questions. The scream of a lone seagull pierced the sky above him. Perry looked up and nodded. “Yeah, I’m with you, buddy.”

You don’t have to drive down the road to find out why the private eye has come here and who he’s come to see because you know exactly who he is talking to.

You wait by the side of the road, car under the trees, hidden in the shadows, trying to imagine their conversation while you gnaw on a PowerBar to keep up your energy. You’ve got a whole bag of them, plus apples and juice boxes. You’re prepared.

You think about all those mansions you’ve passed, the way these people live, and you’re going to have it, too, because you deserve it, and you don’t care who gets hurt. Somebody always gets hurt, but not you, not this time.

You’re trying to picture it, your new life, when the PIs junk heap of a car comes rattling back down the private lane and he’s so damn preoccupied he doesn’t even look your way, just turns onto the main road, and you wait a couple of minutes so as not to arouse suspicion then turn the key in the ignition and follow under a sky with low dark clouds like filthy rags and feel a kind of electricity coursing through your body, hands tingling on the steering wheel because this is what you’ve been waiting for.

I
t didn’t take Perry long to reach his next destination.

The afternoon sky over the Hamptons was darker now, an icy rain just beginning as he headed down the long drive.

The minute Perry Christo walked into Lilith Bates’s studio, one thought came into his mind.

Wannabe.

She had made the third floor of her lavish East Hampton mansion into her work space, and it appeared that she had worked hard to create the image of the artistic recluse; canvases were everywhere. She’d studied the studios of others, and she’d had the house revamped to create magnificent, floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights for her work. She had all the proper utensils for her craft, palettes of oils and watercolors, cabinets with half-opened drawers spilling over with brushes, paint thinners, pens, pencils—every artistic supply an artist could ever want.

Trust-fund baby turned artist!

The Bates’s butler had walked him up, and he knew that she was expecting him, even though she pretended to have completely forgotten he was coming.

One thing he would say for her—Lilith was beautiful.

She was dressed in a form-hugging tank top and knit pants; a white smock blouse—artfully splashed with paint—was carelessly worn over her clothing. She was slender—it seemed that being slender was a requisite in the area. But she also had curves, and the black tank and knit pants revealed that the woman didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat or extra skin—surely carbs never passed her full, well-formed lips.

She was, he believed, thirty-plus, and maybe plus, but whatever plastic surgery she had endured had been done with greater artistry than that seen on any of her canvases.

She looked up from her current work in progress as the butler led him in.

“Mr. Perry Christo, mum,” the butler announced. The butler had already made Perry feel as if he had stepped into an old black-and-white English film on the aristocracy. He was dead straight, didn’t crack a smile, and wore an impeccable tux. Maybe that was what butlers really did—walk around in impeccable tuxes and look good and stiff.

Hmm. If the guy
were
a stiff, he might not look much different.

“Oh, dear! That was fast. You just called.”

“I did say fifteen or twenty minutes, didn’t I?”

“It seemed like only a moment ago. I’m a mess.”

She is anything but,
thought Perry.

Lilith seemed disconcerted as she set her brush on the palette, rose from the chair she’d been sitting in before her canvas, and walked—no, sailed, and quite regally—over to him. She extended a hand—a perfectly manicured, soft hand—and smiled.

“How do you do, Mr. Christo. It is
Mr.,
right? It’s my understanding you’re a private investigator, and not a detective? I seldom see people, but you did sound as if you had such passion when you called!”

The way she smiled at him—like a grinning bobcat about to pounce—he wondered if she had looked him up, if
she
knew about his past, too.

“Yes, it’s Mr. Christo. But please, call me Perry,” he said.

Her smiled deepened. She assessed him as he stood there. He felt a little like a cut of meat at a butcher’s shop. But maybe it was important. He took some of his frustrations and his anger—mostly at himself—out on gym equipment. That might stand him well today.

Though at the moment, the way she was looking at him, he felt like some male escort. Clearly, she had deigned to see him because she was curious.

“Call me Lilith,” she told him. “Jeeves, we’ll take champagne, please,” she said to the butler, not bothering to look his way.

The butler’s name is really Jeeves?

“None for me, thank you,” Perry said.

“Oh, Mr. Christo—Perry!” she said. “Indulge me. Obviously you’re here because you want something from me. That does mean that you should humor all my whims.”

He didn’t say yes or no; the butler with the improbable name silently turned and disappeared.

“Do come on in, Perry,” Lilith said with a broad sweep of her hand. At the one end of her studio was a settee with a small table before it. She indicated that he should sit.

As he walked toward the settee, he looked at her work. Lilith took the concept of “abstract” to the extreme. Splotches of color adorned most of the canvases.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

He smiled. “I once went to a showing at the Guggenheim,” he told her.

“And?”

“They had just spent an incredible sum on a painting called
Black
.”

“And does my work remind you of that priceless piece of art?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It was black.”

“Ah, but art is in the texture, in the subtext! What was the artist saying?” she asked.

“That he’d gotten a lot of black paint?”

She waved a hand in the air. “Well, of course, you were a cop. You were, right, at one time?” she asked, her smile dazzling. Her lips were generous and well formed, rich. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, and they set in her perfectly chiseled face like twin beacons of mischief. One of her elegant ringed hands moved in the air with an expression of patience. “One doesn’t expect someone unschooled in the arts to understand.”

He blinked, willing himself to keep his face impassive, and quickly put himself in check; he wanted information out of this woman, and despite his inclination, he smiled and said, “Actually, I was lucky. My mother was an illustrator for a series of children’s books. She loved art—she would have loved to see your work. You’re exactly right; great art is usually in the subtext.

“And Lilith, you are following along the lines of some magnificent work in the Hamptons. Why, two of the finest leaders of abstract expressionism—
action painting
—lived, worked, and even died here. Willem de Kooning moved to the Springs section of East Hampton in 1963 and died there at the ripe old age of ninety-two. His wife, Elaine, who did JFK’s official painting, came and went, living with him sometimes even after they divorced. Then there was Jackson Pollock. He moved here to the Springs, and, we know, poor devil died in a car crash. His wife, Lee Krasner, was an artist, too. You’re in the perfect place.” He quietly thanked his mother for his art education.

“My, my, my—Perry. You
do
know something—about the Hamptons, and about art,” she said, slipping her arm through his. She
pressed close. He could feel the rise of her breasts against his upper arm.

He paused by one of her paintings, hoping he didn’t choke on his words. “This . . . this is magnificent. The blues . . . I can’t claim to know everything, but in the drip of the paint, in the sweep of the colors, I see something of Dalí. I’m seeing the ocean merge into the sky. And the dots . . . people, like ants, moving about and never seeing that they’re all part of something grand. They’re far too busy in their little lives to realize that earth and sky meet, and yet there . . . your lone voyeur—she sees it all, and she sees herself melting into earth and sky sadly, so aware that she’s but a speck of sand or a grain of salt in the ocean.”

Lilith looked at him and then at her painting. “You do have a deep soul, Perry. I’m so glad you like my work.”

“It’s brilliant,” he lied. Quite frankly, the painting looked like smudges of blue and green with some black dots sprinkled throughout.

“You’ve voiced my work with greater empathy than I might have managed myself,” she murmured.

Of course he had. She’d had no idea of what she’d been painting. And neither did he.

“Do sit down, please, and tell me why you’ve come, why you wanted to see me.”

She led him to the settee. He sat at one end. She draped herself at the other but in a way that brought her leaning close to him.

Jeeves cleared his throat and tapped at the door. He carried a silver tray with a silver ice bucket and crystal champagne flutes.

“Shall I pour, mum?”

“Yes, please do, Jeeves,” Lilith said. She had one arm leaned on the back of the settee. Her legs were half curled beneath her. She wore the white shirt open, and the mounds of her breasts generously spilled above the scoop of her tank top.

She still didn’t look at Jeeves; her eyes were on Perry, and that secretive smile curved her lips. Jeeves slipped her champagne flute into her hand. “Thank you,” she said briefly.

Perry reached for his own glass and nodded his thanks to the butler. He couldn’t help but think of the movie
Clue.

What do butlers do?

They butle, of course.

“Will that be all, mum?” Jeeves asked.

“Yes, please, and see that we’re not disturbed. Mr. Christo and I have a matter of some importance to discuss,” Lilith said.

Jeeves left them, closing the door to the studio behind him.

Lilith took a sip of her champagne and paused to enjoy the taste. “Do drink up, Perry. Once a bottle of champagne is opened . . . well, you know.”

Not exactly—at least, not in the case of Lilith Bates.

“So,” she asked, and her tone was like warm honey, “just what is the matter of importance we need to discuss?”

“Angelina Loki,” he said.

He didn’t think that he really took her by surprise, but he was astounded by the knife’s edge glitter that came into her eyes.

“Oh?”

Everything about her that had been relaxed, sensual, and sinuous as a cat seemed to change.

“She’s one of your best friends, isn’t she?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

“She’s disappeared.”

“Oh, I doubt that she’s disappeared; I mean, people don’t just disappear, do they? Of course, you may be using that word in an abstract way . . . rather like abstract art. What you see is that she’s disappeared, but of course, she hasn’t really,” Lilith said.

“So you know where she is?” he asked.

“Me? No! Goodness, no!” She’d sipped her champagne so delicately before; now she chugged the contents of the flute.

“Have I upset you?” he asked her.

“No, I mean, I’m quite certain the little minx is just fine, it’s just that—well, as you said. She is one of my dearest friends.”

She rose—rather she unwound herself—in full grace again and walked a few feet into the room, her empty glass forgotten in her hand. “Why are you looking for her?”

“Her mother is distraught; she needs to find her.”

Lilith laughed. It was a dry and brittle sound. She spun on him. “That battle-ax? The only thing that causes her distress is discovering a new wrinkle! Trust me: if that woman is trying to find Angel, Angel’s better off wherever she may be.”

“Ah. I take it you don’t much like her.”

Moving more like a wooden figure, stiff and disjointed, Lilith reached into the ice bucket for the bottle and poured herself more champagne.

“No, I don’t much like her. And that family’s money is wound up into more trusts than you could ever imagine.”

“And you know this from Angel?”

“She may have mentioned it. I just, well, I just assume in a wealthy family like that . . . ”

“That there are financial trusts. Did Angel have one?”

“I . . . assume so. She never seemed to worry about money.”

“And she’ll have more coming after her mother dies?”

“I suppose. But I wouldn’t know about that. How would I?”

“So Angel never said anything to that effect?”

“No.” Lilith’s lips tightened around the word, as if she were lying.

“I see.”

“Julia Drusilla is a gorgon. She has the mothering instincts of a cub-eating papa bear.” She stopped speaking and spun on him. “Oh,
I see—private eye. You’re being paid to find her for that witch who calls herself a mother.”

“I’d never bring harm to Angel,” he said.

Lilith sniffed and turned away from him. He saw that there was a wavering mirror that reflected one of her canvases.

She was looking at her own image in it.

“Could you tell me how well you do know the family?” he asked her.

“We run in the same social circles,” she said, as if that should explain all.

“So you don’t really know her?” he asked.

Lilith moved slightly, arching her back as if she had a crick in it. She was gaining control; once again, her movement as sensual and sinuous as that of a cat.

“Angel came to one of my art showings. She loved my work; she bought a painting. We began to talk about art . . . music . . . life. Then she called me a few weeks later. Poor dear, she loves both her parents, of course, the way children always do, but her father has freed himself from that dreadful woman. You must understand: Angel is a child of beauty—a child of nature. She’s young, impetuous . . . ”