Some Like it Lethal Read online

  For months people had been telling me I needed a dog, but I assumed they meant something large, drooling and protective. Instead of a territorial Doberman, however, I was now using my best handbag to carry around a puppy no bigger than a teapot who thought he was a weapon of mass destruction. Spike had a predatory glitter in his slightly cockeyed gaze and a quick and bloodthirsty bite, not to mention other personal habits that made him unpopular with most human beings. After only a month in my possession, he’d sunk a perfect imprint of canine teeth into the left hand of a man I despised and peed on his foot at the same time. Which was the moment I decided to keep him, despite his flaws. Spike, that is, not my old enemy Jamie Scaithe.

  But Reed wisely didn’t trust the puppy, no doubt because Spike was the offspring of Mrs. Shakespeare’s beloved rat terrier-poodle-rattlesnake mix and a legendary neighborhood mongrel that had been featured on Animal Control’s Most Wanted list for two years.

  Spike popped his head out of my handbag and told Reed in no uncertain terms to back off.

  Reed retreated hastily. “That dog is dangerous.”

  I patted Spike’s bristly head and tried to wedge him back into the bag. “He’s very sweet when you get to know him.”

  “I can’t ever figure out what you’re going to take a shine to,” Reed said.

  “Can we take him along this morning or not?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course. But any minute my sister will come out here demanding to go with us, so hurry up and decide.”

  That information galvanized Reed into action, and he opened the car door. “Let’s go. Just keep that monster away from me.”

  I got into the backseat, and Spike climbed out of my bag. He gave me a smiling puppy yawn before nestling in my lap for an angelic snooze.

  Reed pulled out of Libby’s driveway as if being chased by a rifle-wielding maniac, then drove me out of Bucks County across the back country roads.

  Reed had been driving me around for nearly six months, and so far we seemed suited for each other. I wished I could drive myself, but I was still struggling with an annoying tendency to faint at critical moments. I couldn’t be trusted behind the wheel, so Reed had a part-time job between taking classes at a community college.

  In about half an hour, the sun began to lighten the horizon and we reached the Tri-County Horse Club.

  I thanked Reed and left him to study his textbooks in the car. With Spike tucked securely into my handbag, I threaded my way through the expensive cars that had brought their owners out from the Main Line to the bucolic countryside.

  I rounded a boxwood hedge and came upon Hadley Pinkham.

  He was leaning photogenically on the nearest fence, with the faded autumn hues behind him making the most of his tanned coloring in the early morning light. He wore a rumpled tuxedo that advertised the fact that he hadn’t been home yet after a night carousing on the town. He had removed his tie, however, and wrapped his fringed silk scarf rakishly around his neck to keep off the morning chill. His absurdly handsome face was sharply cut with a long, narrow nose, a flexibly cynical mouth and a dash of fair hair that spilled with false boyishness over what he euphemistically called a high forehead. He carried a glass of something amber in his right hand and a slender cigar in the fingertips of the other. With his sleeve pulled back just so, he showed off a wristwatch that cost more than some oceangoing yachts.

  Hadley looked me up and down and said, “My God, Nora, you’re the only decently dressed woman here. Everyone else makes it look like Ralph Lauren’s warehouse just blew up. You look stunning, kitten. Is that a Claude Montana?”

  “Yes, thanks, Hadley, you glamour-puss.” I’d put on a twelve-year-old jacket bought in Paris during one particularly lush winter of my marriage, along with my faithful black Calvin Klein skirt and a pair of spike-heeled, fawn lace-covered boots that Grandmama Blackbird purchased in 1965 and were, thank heavens, making another miraculous fashion comeback. Underneath it all were my threadbare long johns and a turtleneck sweater from Old Navy. The final look was more Hepburn than horsey, I knew, the kind of fashion juxtaposition Hadley could appreciate. “That’s high praise, coming from you.”

  “Fashion is blood sport, kitten. And you are positively mopping the floors with everyone else. Now say something nice about me, and we’re even.”

  I laughed and kissed his Bijan-scented cheek. “Hadley, you’re the most beautiful man here.”

  “I’m simply oozing sex appeal, aren’t I? All right, I’ll go into this party if you’ll promise not to abandon me to any woman with jewelry that pictures dogs or horses. My God, who is this?”

  “Spike. Be careful, he bites.”

  Hadley sipped from his glass and listened respectfully to Spike’s tenor snarl. “If I looked like that, I’d be bad-tempered, too. What kind of dog is it?”

  “Today I’m calling him a Romanian weasel hound.”

  “Well, keep him chained, kitten. He looks hungry. Tell me about you, now. Are you sleeping with anybody these days? It’s too boring if you’re not.”

  “I’m not, so you’ll have to lie in wait for someone else.”

  He took my hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “You’re fibbing. I heard you’re dating a menace to society who makes everybody under forty go weak in the knees.”

  “What about the over-forties?”

  “The old folks are all horrified. Now dish, kitten, or I’ll be forced to torture you with that god-awful sausage that’s always on the buffet at these morning things. Just because the club’s board has arteries clogged beyond hope doesn’t mean the rest of us have a death wish, right?”

  I’d first become aware of Hadley Pinkham in our childhood days at the croquet club where his father and my father crossed mallets and swizzle sticks every season. Even then, Hadley had charmed his way into my cousin Brophy’s birthday party because my aunt had secured a real elephant for everyone to ride. To the delight of adults and children, Hadley wrapped a waiter’s apron around his head and waved from the howdah like a maharajah, and thereafter Hadley had been a mainstay of my social scene. Now a gay blade about town, he was considered the best dance partner, the most urbane dinner companion and the man at the bar most likely to draw a laugh. Of course, his own swizzle stick didn’t perk up for women, but Hadley had something better than sex.

  He was fun, dammit.

  He could talk clothes better than your best girlfriend, sports better than your college boyfriend and art better than your bluestocking grandmother. You could call him up on a Saturday afternoon for a blitz of shoe shopping and tea, but he never wanted to share your dessert. He knew the best people, played the cleverest hand of bridge and frequented the most chichi shops, spas and nightclubs.

  And he always, always got through the velvet rope.

  “Now, Nora,” he said as we approached the welcome table. “I haven’t donated to the cause, so you’re going to have to smuggle me in.”

  In front of us, a gaggle of debutantes was accepting invitation cards to prevent the hunt breakfast from being gate-crashed by marauding suburbanites in jeans and sneakers. I handed over the vellum card I’d received in the mail. If I had not been a member of the press, I’d have also palmed a discreet envelope containing a donation. As my card was carefully examined for authenticity, Hadley set about charming the girls, who giggled and blushed and never asked to see his invitation. The glass in his hand was a prop, I realized. The girls assumed he’d already been in the party because he had a drink. I couldn’t hold back a smile as Hadley bowed to his audience and took my hand again as we slipped into the party, smooth as you please.

  “Tell me about your boyfriend, Nora,” he said, strolling away in handsome triumph. “Does he make you do deliciously bad things on his waterbed?”

  “He’s in Inverness at the moment, Hadley. He’s gone fishing.”

  “Oh, Lord, the outdoorsy type! Well, then, I’m not the least bit jealous. My idea of a good time is room service at the Ritz,
not standing up to my sporran in a Scottish loch. When are we going to meet him?”

  Maybe never, I thought, and my answer must have shown in my face because Hadley laughed. “Afraid we’ll eat him for lunch?”

  “Not even close,” I said.

  “How in-ter-esting. Well, it’s good to hear you’re back in circulation, kitten, whoever the reason. I can now say that I always thought your husband was a shit. Of course, all you Blackbird girls choose the wrong men, which is why you always end up widows, I suppose. I’m sorry he’s dead—well, not too sorry—but dying was the best thing he could have done for you.”

  “Thank you for sharing, Hadley, but forgive me if I don’t find that sentiment comforting.”

  “I tell it like it is, baby.” He gave me a placating kiss on my temple. “Now, go forth and have your little fling with the outlaw before you settle down with one of our own kind.”

  “Nobody is an outlaw,” I snapped with more force than I intended.

  His eyebrows lifted. “What a good sign! I never saw you get this touchy about your husband.”

  “Nobody ever felt the need to share idiotic opinions about him when he was alive.”

  “No? I wonder why not. Well, you suffered in splendid silence, which was heartbreaking for those of us who knew you when you used to hide Miss Markham’s dancing slippers. I’m glad to hear you get snippy.”

  My relationship with my husband was too complicated for me to understand even now, nearly two years after the night his cocaine dealer shot him in a slushy South Philly alley, so I wasn’t going to analyze my feelings with the likes of Hadley.

  I said, “You’re still a juvenile delinquent, Hadley.”

  He laughed again. “I know! And you love me anyway!”

  We rounded more English shrubbery, and he stopped dead, aghast at the building that reared up ahead of us. “Sweet heaven, will you look at the new club? I haven’t been here since the renovations. Who hit the lottery?”

  Once a rustic farm owned by the Strawcutter family—of the dog-food-fortune Strawcutters, of course—the land had been donated as a tax write-off decades ago to some avid equestrians to create a club where members could play polo, practice their dressage or follow the club’s pack of hounds over the countryside. Lately, the club had enjoyed the stock market success of its members, and with a post-dot-com flood of cash, the original fieldstone house had been quadrupled in size and renovated into a full-fledged country club with all the amenities. The resulting castle might have been plucked from Prince Charles’s back yard and plopped down in the Pennsylvania meadows, but it had industrial air-conditioning, a massive event kitchen and rooms of every size and configuration for entertaining. And just in case an attacking Norman horde had to be repelled, the central turret sported narrow windows perfect for longbows or cauldrons of boiling oil. Multiple chimneys on either end bespoke massive fireplaces within, perfect for roasting mastodon or warding off chilblains.

  On the double doors, a brass plate read TRI-COUNTY HORSE CLUB, EST. 1895, which was an outright lie. The date signified the first time an elderly Strawcutter climbed on a plow horse to chase a neighbor’s mutt out of his cornfield.

  I said, “I hear they bought the dining room carpet from the old Pressley Hotel. It’s sixty feet long.”

  Hadley stared at the new building. “Talk about contemptuous consumption! Is it true the faucets in the little boys’ room cost four thousand apiece?”

  I smiled. “What about your house, Hadley? How many gold faucets do you have at the Pinkham Arms?”

  He laughed, having dubbed his family’s Main Line estate after a crumbling hotel himself. “Well, at least ours are old.”

  Old, indeed. Five generations of Pinkhams lived the good life thanks to the proceeds of their grandfather’s book of stunning photographs of the civil war. George Franklin Pinkham, the famous pioneer photographer and descendant of a fine American landscape painter, had chronicled the battles and aftermath of the war between the states in a book that still—more than one hundred years after Appomattox—appeared on best-seller lists at Christmastime.

  Beyond the club’s mansion we could see the polo field, the dressage ring and the long twin barns with the cobblestone stable yard running between. A white tent stood at one end, sheltering the festive buffet. Guests already milled in the yard, drinking their spiked coffee from silver handleless cups. Waiters in gray morning coats and white gloves glided among the crowd, warming up their drinks while keeping the hungry ones away from the food until the hunt arrived from the field.

  I could see the gathering was primarily people who didn’t belong to the club but who came out of their Main Line homes one cold morning every year to claim they’d attended the prestigious annual hunt breakfast. The women—most wearing ungainly and unseasonable hats—were trying not to get their high heels stuck between the Rhode Island cobblestones underfoot. The men, ruddy-faced and falsely hearty, nearly all looked as if they would much rather be on a Palm Beach golf course as long as they were awake at such an ungodly hour on a November Saturday.

  Hadley and I remained on the brick path above the yard.

  “See what I mean about the clothes?” he asked. “Have you ever seen so much tweed outside the Cotswolds?”

  A horn blast split the cold air. As everyone turned to watch, the hunt appeared over the crest of the hill and burst out of the morning mist, the vivid colors of hounds, horses and people brilliant against the fading autumn foliage. The master of the hounds led the tongue-lolling pack, and the members of the hunt followed to the muffled thunder of hooves on turf, sitting triumphantly high in their saddles after a good morning’s gallop. The horses, blowing clouds of steam, were magnificent in the morning sunlight. Their coats—black, chestnut and mottled gray—gleamed with glorious sweat. The scarlet coats of the men glowed against the backdrop of frosty ground. The women, in shades of black and crisp navy blue, some even riding side-saddle with full skirts and handsome bowler hats, seemed to leap from the pages of a romantic picture book. Spotted hounds with their tails still high flowed like a living river around the master. Steel bits jingled, voices called and laughed. The heavy smell of upturned earth and coming snow swept over the crowd.

  I said, “Admit it, Hadley. It’s a beautiful spectacle.”

  He drained the last of his drink. “You forget I’m allergic to the picturesque.”

  As if disagreeing with him, the crowd on the ground burst into spontaneous applause. From my handbag, Spike gave a yip of agreement.

  The annual hunt breakfast was an event that both celebrated the beginning of formal hunting at Tri-County and raised money for the local humane society. Years earlier, the club had abandoned hunting live animals and instead dragged a scented bag for the hounds to follow over hill and dale for the sport of the chase. Giving a donation to the humane society seemed a natural extension of their decision to become a bloodless hunt.

  For a chaotic half minute, the hounds mingled with the oohing crowd in the stable yard. Then the whip called them back to him, and the pack eagerly went off to their kennel. I could see their building from where I stood. It had been the summer playhouse of some Strawcutter granddaughters back before the crash of ’29, making the Tri-County hounds the only dogs in the world who slept in a splendid replica of a Bavarian despot’s castle.

  “Is Emma riding today?” Hadley asked. “Doing her Sheena, Queen of the Asphalt Jungle imitation? No, I take that back—Emma is everything and more than Sheena.”

  “Yes, she’s here somewhere. I hope to catch her.”

  Reminded of my secondary purpose for attending the breakfast, I looked for Emma amidst the riders. But the kaleidoscope of people and animals prevented me from catching a glimpse of my wayward younger sister.

  Some of the riders dismounted and led their horses off to the barns, while others who didn’t stable their animals at the club headed for the cluster of trailers parked near the polo field.

  Below us in the yard, a tall, elderly man swung d
own from his saddle and threw the reins at his private groom, uttering a curse that turned heads.

  “Tottie’s still working that Boarman charm,” Hadley observed.

  Thornton “Tottie” Boarman had been master of the hunt for as long as I could remember, but he’d recently stepped down from that illustrious position, citing business obligations. He didn’t look too happy about his first hunt as retired master.

  Hadley said, “I hear he’s got more trouble than his personality these days.”

  “I heard that, too,” I murmured.

  Hadley gave me a raised eyebrow. “His margin was called by the stock exchange. He’s lost a bundle of his own money, not to mention oodles of dough belonging to his clients. Where did all that cash go? Pretty serious stuff for a man who wouldn’t outlive a prison sentence.”

  “With half the Main Line losing money on his investment schemes, he’s probably lucky to still be alive now,” I agreed.

  Tottie shoved past his groom and marched up the brick walkway toward us, ripping off his top hat as he strode. He was tall, with a vain man’s mane of flowing white hair and a prominent knob of a chin. At that moment, his heavy features were set in a tense scowl, bushy white brows practically concealing his steely blue eyes. His boots rang out on the bricks underfoot as he climbed toward us. He had the stiff gait of someone who’d spent many years spurring horses over fences. . . . or kicking his employees around. His reddened fingers ripped at the buttons on his scarlet coat.

  “Good morning, Tottie,” Hadley sang as the old man approached. “Lovely morning for a ride.”

  Tottie looked up and frowned deeper. “Pinkham,” he rasped in disgust. “The only thing you’d ride shouldn’t be seen in the light of day, you pervert. Get out of my way. I’ve got to take a piss.”

  Tottie brushed past me as if I were invisible. Thank heavens.

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Hadley replied mildly. “You okay, Nora?”

  I caught my balance on Hadley’s arm. “Fine, no thanks to him. You’d think he might make an effort to be likable to the one person in town who definitely didn’t lose a fortune on one of his deals.”