A Little Night Murder Read online

  Indoors, the great house’s many gracious amenities included a billiards room with cigar burns courtesy of J.P. Morgan, a salon where polo teams could be plied with cocktails and a servant’s wing with forty numbered bells in the hallway. That wing was currently empty, since Lexie couldn’t afford more than the services of her longtime houseman, Samir, who had taken a deep pay cut to continue to loyally shop, cook and keep house. Lexie confided to me that he had accepted the job offer because he was writing a book in his spare time—subject unknown so far—and he was glad to have his own sprawling suite in the essentially empty house for staring glumly at his computer screen. To our tremendous gratitude, Samir made our lunch every day and regularly appeared with frosty pitchers of herbal tea.

  It was not Samir, however, who came through the diaphanous curtains of the French doors and stepped onto the bluestone terrace of the pool, carrying our refreshed iced tea pitcher in one hand and pinning a portfolio under his other arm. Rather, it was a tall, hulking man with an infamous reputation.

  He said to Lexie, “I think I just scared the bejesus out of your butler.”

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Lexie called to him, “he recovers quickly. Michael, is Nora expecting twins, do you think?”

  The father of my baby put the fresh pitcher on the table. “Doctor says just one. Last month, she showed us the pictures to prove it, ’cause I had my doubts.” He ambled to the edge of the pool and smiled down at me. “How was yoga class?”

  I paddled over to the stairs. “Great. Baby Girl loved it, too. She was very peaceful.” I put my wet hand up to him.

  Michael Abruzzo, who had sworn he was getting out of organized crime, was still frequently mistaken for a wanted criminal. He had big shoulders and a broken face, and in public he often kept up a kind of benign menace that could scatter a crowd. But he helped me out of the pool as if I were precious glass. From a nearby lounge chair, he pulled a towel and clasped it around as much of me as it could cover.

  I stretched up on tiptoe and gave him a kiss. “Did anyone follow you?”

  He raised one eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “After that masterful display of evasive driving during last week’s escape,” I said, referring to Michael’s command of the lead car in our prison escape plan, “I don’t mean to cast any doubt on your criminal expertise, but—”

  “I didn’t have any reporters on my tail today. Lexie’s undisclosed location is still a secret.” He kissed me again. “Did you tell her?”

  I smiled up into his blue eyes. “I was waiting for you to get here.”

  Lexie perked up. “Tell me what? Are you two keeping secrets?”

  I clasped his hand, and he squeezed mine back. I took a deep breath and faced my friend. “We’re getting married. A week from Friday. We picked up the marriage license yesterday.”

  “Darlings!”

  Lexie leaped from the pool and hugged us both, leaving a wet splotch on Michael’s shirt and me feeling tearily happy.

  With her eyes shining, too, she cried, “After all this time, all your ups and downs—how romantic. Friday? Where? What can I do? Lord, I can’t afford an extravagant gift, so it will have to be a service of some kind—anything.”

  “The main service? Don’t tell my sisters. Either one of them. We’re trying to do this quietly, and you know Libby. Given enough time, she’ll rent a circus tent and hire the Harlem Globetrotters to officiate, so I’ll wait until the eleventh hour to invite her.”

  “Of course. Not a word from me. But—could we invite friends here for a shindig after? It might have to be hot dogs and potato chips, but I bet there’s some of Mama’s champagne in the cellar. Let me throw you a reception.”

  “I don’t think that’s smart. The press will certainly view our wedding as something out of The Godfather, and there would be photographers in helicopters who would spot you. So, no, we’re going to see a judge in her chambers. Judge Scotto—do you know her? And maybe you’d sneak out of here long enough to be a witness? We need two. It will be very quiet.”

  Suddenly Lexie had real tears in her eyes—a flash of her former intuitive, empathetic self. More than anyone, she understood the complexities of my relationship with Michael—all the reasons why I had been afraid to marry him, share a life and family with him, as well as the sometimes irrational rationales that compelled me into his arms. Although Michael and I came from different worlds—different kinds of dysfunctional families—we shared the desire to create a stable family for ourselves. Lexie recognized that.

  She gave me another, gentler hug. “You’re getting married before the baby comes. Very wise. I wish you both all the happiness you deserve. Of course I’ll be a witness. And I’ll keep your secret, I promise. Libby would certainly make a big production, indeed. I won’t breathe a syllable.”

  “Not to anyone.” Michael hooked his thumb back at the house. “Not even to the person I brought along today.”

  “Who did you bring?” I asked, surprised.

  “Somebody to meet you. She’s in the house, powdering her nose.”

  I had already noted that he’d come wearing an old white dress shirt, sleeves folded back over his forearms, the tail untucked over his usual jeans. The look was a significant sartorial upgrade from his customary black T-shirt, which alerted me that he had brought someone important. “Maybe I should go put on something more suitable?”

  “You look great. She’ll be here in a minute. Meanwhile,” he confessed, “I need to talk to Lexie.”

  Although intrigued about who had come with him, I said, “What are you two working on? Is Lexie teaching you all there is to know about business?”

  Lexie gathered up a towel for herself. “Your groom doesn’t need me to play teacher, sweetie. I’ve mentored MBAs with less insight into the financial world. In fact, it’s the other way around this time. And he’s keeping me sane. If I didn’t have something complicated to think about, I’d be going crazy.”

  I decided not to take offense, patted myself dry and reached for my T-shirt. But her words gave me pause. Was this the reinvention I had been expecting? With some humor, I said, “Should I be worried?”

  Michael didn’t respond as he settled into a lounge chair. He fished his reading glasses out of the pocket of his shirt and opened the portfolio of papers. Also in the portfolio was a small laptop, which he flipped open.

  Lexie said, “Since I can’t get a job to save my life—not with my licenses revoked and all my former associates pretending I have the plague—your groom and I thought we’d put our heads together on a project.”

  “A project,” I said lightly. “Is it legal?”

  “In some countries.” Michael matched my tone. “Do you want to know more?”

  “The less, the better. I don’t want to be served with a subpoena in the maternity ward.”

  Lexie bit her lip, but Michael smiled at me. “That’s my girl.”

  I sat in the chair next to his. For all our jesting, I trusted he wasn’t going to break any laws. His own precarious legal status—on parole for racketeering with the rest of the notorious Abruzzo family, and at risk of returning to prison if he so much as sneezed in the wrong direction—was worth minding. But I wasn’t sure where Lexie was headed.

  I pulled on the T-shirt. Due to my dire financial straits, I had been forced to dig into my sister Libby’s collection of hand-me-down maternity clothes, which meant I was bending my fashion rules considerably. Libby’s taste ran to gaudy items with funny sayings printed on them.

  Today’s bright yellow T-shirt read LET ME OUT, IT’S DARK IN HERE. I had counted on nobody seeing me except my close friend, but here I was, stuck looking ridiculous.

  Michael sent me a sideways glance and smothered a smile.

  “It was free,” I reminded him.

  “It’s not bad,” he said. But any minute he was going to burst out la
ughing.

  Saving me from further embarrassment, my cell phone rang in the depths of my beach bag, and I struggled up to reach for it.

  Lexie saved me the trouble. She found my phone, saying, “You’re working hard these days, Nora, despite our lazy afternoons. Is the social season heating up?”

  “It never cooled down,” I said, accepting the phone. “But my editor has been on vacation. Now that he’s back on American soil, he’s shouting for my head.”

  “Why?”

  “I misbehaved while he was away. It’s time to pay the piper.”

  But the phone stopped ringing in my hand.

  Of all the people who phoned me, only my editor was so impatient that he’d hang up after only two rings. I checked the caller ID. Yes, Gus Hardwicke was obviously back from Australia.

  “Why is he shouting?”

  “In his absence, I may have exceeded my station.”

  “I like what you’ve been doing lately,” Lexie said. “The article about the ten best charities and the ten worst? That took real reporting. If that sort of thing is your new direction, I think it’s great.”

  “Mr. Hardwicke may not think so. There have been irate letters to the editor about the ten worst charities. People complained that I discouraged donors.”

  She was impatient. “Why give money to a charity that sends less than five percent of the funds they raise to their actual mission? They’re giving all their income to professional fund-raisers! That’s outrageous.”

  “Even five percent is better than nothing, some might say.”

  My phone chirped—a signal I had received a text. I checked. From Gus.

  Where is Lexie Paine???

  I should have guessed he’d already be hot on the trail of Lexie’s story. I put the phone away before she could see the screen.

  I knew I should call him back, but instead I decided to put off the inevitable for just a few more minutes. I dried my legs while Michael asked Lexie a convoluted question about currency exchange and offshore bank accounts. I sipped tea and tried not to think about large-scale international money laundering.

  But their financial confab was interrupted by music from the house next door. From the distance of two football fields away, the trilling of opening chords on a piano rose over the treetops. I couldn’t see from our poolside vantage point, but I heard a pair of voices join in, singing warm-up scales.

  Lexie rolled her eyes. “Cue the howling dogs. The music is starting early today.”

  Michael glanced up from his computer screen to listen. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s my neighbors.” With one hand, Lexie indicated the half-hidden mansion that stood behind a screen of tall trees. “Back in the day, my great-grandfather and his brother built these twin houses up here. The brother sold his to Toodles Tuttle.”

  “Toodles?” Michael grinned.

  “You know all about credit default swaps, but not Broadway theater?” Lexie demanded.

  To Michael, I said, “Toodles Tuttle was a very famous composer. He wrote musicals.”

  “Tap dancing and chorus girls, right?”

  “Exactly,” said Lexie. “He made a fortune at it, too, which was how he could afford the house. But Toodles died a few years ago. Now his wife lives next door, the old harridan, with a slew of minions who obey her every command. The gardener told me she recently discovered one of her husband’s unproduced musicals, and they’re trying to get it ready for the stage. She’s looking for investors, if you’re interested.”

  Just then one of the singers hit a flat note, and Michael winced. “Sounds like a losing proposition to me.”

  But Lexie looked thoughtful. “A totally new Toodles musical? It might be very lucrative.”

  “From what I’ve heard these last few days,” I said, “the songs are pretty good. We can’t see the dance rehearsals, of course, but—”

  “Uh-oh.” Michael’s expression changed. “Dance rehearsals? I think I just figured out something.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” a voice called musically from the house. “Is everybody decent? Or are you skinny-dipping?”

  Michael got to his feet and said to me, “Brace yourself.”

  The woman who came up the stairs was a tall, sixtysomething redhead with impossibly long legs, displayed in a leopard-print skirt much tighter and shorter than anyone her age should be seen wearing. She also wore bright blue eye shadow and livid red lipstick and had piled her fiery hair high. Maybe my mind was already on Broadway, but my first thought was that she looked like a woman ready to take center stage.

  Lexie scrambled up and extended her hand to her newest guest. “Hello, I’m Lexie.” She skipped her last name.

  “Hiya, doll. I’m Bridget O’Halloran. Great to meet you at last!” She pumped Lexie’s hand with enthusiasm. “Mickey has told me all about you. Except he didn’t mention you were such a looker.”

  “Mickey, hmm?” Lexie sent Michael an impish look.

  Which he missed, because he was pulling me to a standing position. “Uh, Bridget, Lexie’s just a friend. This is her house. But here’s Nora.”

  Off-balance and unwieldy, I wobbled in the tall shadow of Bridget O’Halloran, shielding my eyes against the glare of the sunlight to look up into her face. She was exactly the kind of woman who appeared on The Real Housewives of some-such place—lots of extra hair that couldn’t possibly be natural and clothes that managed to look both expensive and very cheap indeed. She was wearing false eyelashes, but the vivid blue of her eyes gave her away. I knew instantly who she was.

  She inspected me, too. From the curl on her lip, I could see she wasn’t pleased with the picture I made. To keep the chlorine out of my hair, I had configured a less than chic topknot with a cheap banana clip. I had liberally coated my nose with white sunscreen, too. And my silly shirt wasn’t going to win any runway accolades.

  I smiled bravely, however, and put out my hand. “How do you do?”

  “How dooo you dooo?” she parroted back at me, then laughed. A laugh with an edge of hostility. “You sound like you’ve got a silver spoon shoved up your—”

  “Nora,” Michael intervened, “this is Bridget O’Halloran. My mother.”

  Lexie made an involuntary squeak in her throat and shot me a wide-eyed stare that managed to say, His mother?

  Michael had been born the son of Big Frankie Abruzzo—the boss of most of the organized crime that still operated in southern New Jersey—and Big Frankie’s paramour, an exotic dancer who had willingly handed over her child to be raised with the rest of the Abruzzo boys by Big Frankie’s wife. Michael referred to his biological mother by her first name, and he told me he’d been in touch with her off and on his whole life. Whether Bridget still saw Big Frankie, I wasn’t sure, but judging by the diamond bracelet on her wrist and the large designer handbag on her toned arm, I guessed she was accepting generous presents from somebody with very deep pockets.

  She looked around the pool. “Nice joint you’ve got here,” she said to Lexie. “I once had a boyfriend who had a pool like this. He was a champion Olympic swimmer. He wanted to marry me, but I didn’t like the idea of living with a man who wore a Speedo all the time. You don’t have any guys in Speedos, huh? Because they’re kinda fun for the short haul.”

  “Not today,” Lexie said with a smile.

  “So,” Bridget said to me, “how come you won’t marry my son?”

  Her blunt question shocked me into a stutter. “Uh, I—I—”

  To Lexie, Michael said, “Bridget speaks her mind.”

  Bridget’s glare turned even frostier on me. “He says he asks, and you say no. Now you’re as big as a cow with his kid, and you still won’t get married? How come? You too good for him?”

  “Why—of course not.”

  “He says you’re cursed or something, and that’s why you’re putting off a wedding. Wh
at’s that all about?”

  “The Blackbird curse,” I said.

  “What kind of curse? Is it for real?”

  “My family—that is, all the women in my family—tend to be widowed young. And although I really don’t believe in that kind of thing, I admit I worry that something terrible might happen when—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Michael said. “Back off, Bridget.”

  “Hey, I’m not making judgments,” Bridget said, raising both hands as if the local sheriff had commanded her to reach for the sky. “I just don’t like the idea of some rich society girl thinking her shit doesn’t stink.”

  “Bridget!”

  “How about some iced tea?” Lexie interjected before Michael could further object to his mother’s choice of words. “Or—is it too early for gin and tonics?”

  “Gin and tonic would hit the spot,” Bridget said. “Plenty of lime. Light on the tonic.”

  “Coming right up!” With an apologetic look thrown over her shoulder, Lexie fled toward the house.

  Michael’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at the screen before apologizing to me. “Sorry. Business. I gotta take this.” He walked to the far end of the terrace before answering his call. If I’d had a towel in my hands, I’d have twisted it up and used it to strangle him.

  As both of them abandoned me to fend for myself, I was left standing in front of Bridget O’Halloran while she dug into her handbag and rooted out a stick of gum. She peeled it open, giving me another chilly once-over that made me feel like the fat lady at a carnival sideshow. Dropping any pretense of politeness, she said, “How far gone are you?”

  “Seven months,” I replied, mustering good cheer.