No Way To Kill A Lady Read online

  “I do,” I said, feeling the melancholy tug of sadness. “She was a friendly little thing. Always giving us shortbread cookies, remember?”

  Emma shook her head. “It’s not like me to forget cookies, but I don’t. I was too young, I guess.”

  I said, “Aunt Madeleine brought Pippi home from one of her trips overseas. She worked in the household for years. She was always trying to teach Madeleine some Swedish words.”

  “Russian,” Libby corrected. “She spoke Russian with Madeleine.” She rooted around in her cleavage for her handkerchief. “Dear me, it’s just too sad to think of Pippi dying all alone in an elevator. How horrible it must have been.”

  “Why didn’t she climb out?” Emma cut a huge chunk of French toast. “Don’t all elevators have some kind of escape hatch?”

  “She was tiny,” Libby said. “Probably too small to—to—oh, let’s talk about something else, can we? It’s just too upsetting.”

  I was feeling the burn of tears again, too. “It’s very sad, isn’t it? First Aunt Madeleine, and now Pippi.”

  I tried to remember some details of Pippi. Yes, she had been small and blond and not terribly proficient in English. Mostly, I recalled that she had been Aunt Madeleine’s constant companion. More than a housekeeper, she had driven our demanding aunt everywhere in her white Bentley and carried Madeleine’s handbag as they shopped Main Line boutiques or the prestigious floors of Philadelphia department stores. Pippi wore Madeleine’s hand-me-down clothes—tailoring the expensive garments to fit her smaller figure. And when the hairdresser came to the house to fix Madeleine’s hair, there was always an hour spent trimming and fluffing Pippi, too.

  They ate breakfast and lunch together every day at a small table in the corner of the salon. In the evenings, I remembered Pippi bringing a tray of coffee cups into the television room so they could watch Jeopardy! together.

  Madeleine relied on her industrious housekeeper, too. When something went wrong, I could still hear Aunt Madeleine’s voice raised in a musical sort of cry. “Pippeeeeee!”

  I cut across Libby and Emma discussing football kickers. “When did Aunt Madeleine hire Pippi?”

  My sisters looked blankly at me. “What?”

  “When did Pippi first appear? Where did she come from?”

  “I don’t remember,” Libby said.

  “Don’t ask me.” Emma warmed up her coffee by pouring more from the carafe.

  “And why didn’t she go with Madeleine to Indonesia?”

  “Probably because Madeleine wanted to be alone with her lover,” Libby replied. “Why would you want another woman tagging along on your romantic adventure?”

  “But Pippi took care of Madeleine,” I insisted. “She waited on her hand and foot. I can’t imagine Madeleine moving anywhere without her.”

  Emma shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Maybe Shirley van Vincent knows,” I said. “Could you ask her, Em?”

  My little sister blinked at me. “Sure, what the hell. But what we really need to know is when Pippi died. Did she have anything to do with the stuff that disappeared from Madeleine’s place?”

  “Yes, when did all the art disappear?” I said, reminded of the many treasures missing from Quintain.

  “It would be a terrible shame if kids broke into the house looking for a way to make some beer money,” Libby said. “The statuary belonged in a museum, not in a roadside flea market. And the Fabergé egg! What if it’s sitting in some child’s Easter basket in a closet right now? It’s possible the thief had no idea how valuable it was.”

  “Libby,” I said, “could you do a little research? Make a list of the pieces you remember best? Surely the egg will have turned up somewhere. Things of that value don’t just disappear.”

  “Well, I have to think of Maximus right now. And my PitterPat followers.”

  “Libby, this is important.” I turned to Emma. “What did you see when you were upstairs? Before Libby screamed?”

  She shrugged. “You mean before Groatley cornered me in one of the bedrooms?”

  “He cornered you?”

  She grinned. “He had his pants unbuttoned and everything, the old goat.”

  “But—but you’re pregnant!” Libby sputtered.

  “My stomach wasn’t going to get in the way of what he had in mind. He almost had me bent over a dresser before I figured out what was—er—up. Don’t look so shocked,” she said to me. “I fought him off.”

  “Em, how awful.”

  Another shrug. “No big deal. He’s a pig, that’s all. He knew his way around the bedrooms, though.”

  “Men are such animals sometimes,” Libby said indignantly. “They get themselves a little power and privilege and suddenly they’re God’s gift to women? They imagine every female within sniffing distance of their pheromones can’t wait to rip off her panties and get jiggy. Well, no woman alive wants to be chased around the bedposts anymore.”

  “Really?” Emma grinned. “You don’t want to be chased around the bedposts?”

  “Certainly not!” Libby took out her compact and examined her reflection in the small mirror. “I want to choose for myself. I want atmosphere and consideration and respect for my adventurous nature, not some boar in rut. If Simon Groatley comes after me with his pants down, he’d better make sure I don’t have a hatchet handy.”

  “You carry one in your purse, maybe?” Emma said.

  “I bet Aunt Madeleine did.” Libby powdered her nose. “Or the equivalent.”

  “You said Groatley knew his way around upstairs,” I said to Emma. “I wonder how? Did he have a personal relationship with Madeleine?”

  Emma set down the coffeepot. “Nora, you’re acting like we should be investigating something. What are you up to?”

  I sat up straight and stern. “Look, you two. Don’t you see? Nobody’s going to be on our side in this. You want your share of the inheritance, don’t you? Well, we’re not going to inherit a penny if it’s already gone. Em, you’ll deliver that baby in a stable. And Lib, you’ll have to pay for Max’s football training by cleaning toilets at the gym with your very own bucket of Lysol. We have to figure out what happened or we won’t get one red cent of our inheritance!”

  My lecture galvanized Libby. She dove into her handbag for a notepad and pen.

  Elbow on the table, Emma cupped her chin in her palm and gave me an amused look. “Did you have time to discuss any of this with Sutherland?”

  Alert to Emma’s wry tone, Libby looked up from her notepad. “You had a discussion with Sutherland?”

  “A short one,” I admitted. “He put me on notice. He intends to fight us for Quintain. No surprise there, of course.”

  “The surprise was the way he looked at you,” Emma said tartly. “I was watching from an upstairs window. That’s how Groatley sneaked up on me.”

  “Sutherland looked at Nora?” Libby asked.

  “He practically went down on one knee in front of her.”

  “Nora!” Libby dropped the notepad. “You and Sutherland?”

  “Don’t be silly. I have no interest in Sutherland. For one thing, he’s our cousin.”

  “Second cousin. Or third,” Emma said. “Aunt Madeleine married a cousin.”

  “And look how well that turned out.”

  “Sutherland’s very attractive,” Libby said slowly. “A little old for you, maybe, but that’s not an insurmountable—”

  “Isn’t anyone listening?” I demanded. “I have no interest in Sutherland. I’m in a committed relationship.”

  Perhaps my tone was too sharp.

  After a weighty pause, Emma said, “You’ve been there before, Sis.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  Libby leaned forward. “What Emma means is you committed yourself heart and soul to your first husband, Nora—even after he went crazy with drugs. You were in denial for a long time, and I’m not saying you enabled his addiction—”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “—but
it took you a long time to admit he had a serious problem. Even after he was finally killed by his dealer—well, I’m your sister, so I can tell it to you straight. You were blind to the truth.”

  Emma translated. “Todd was a shit. You should have divorced him.”

  “And now,” Libby continued, “That Man of Yours is in jail and may be away for a long time. I know you don’t believe he’s the least bit guilty of anything, my dear sister, but . . . maybe you should consider moving on with your life? Looking for some happiness for yourself? Your biological clock is ticking.”

  Sometimes I wished I could be as transparent as Libby—blurting out my desires to anyone who would listen. Or as good at controlling my feelings as Emma—with her blunt way of turning off her emotions when they got too difficult to manage. But I was somewhere in the middle. I’d put my heart in danger. And now, in their separate, annoying and yet deeply caring ways, my sisters were trying to protect me.

  I said, “Don’t worry about me. When Michael has served his sentence and comes home, we’ll be perfectly happy.”

  “Well, good,” Libby said, but her face was doubtful.

  Her cell phone rang, and she checked the caller ID before answering. Over the past couple of years, her various children had caused plenty of uproars. When she answered the call, she kept her voice businesslike. “Yes, Rawlins?”

  Emma and I glanced at each other. At least it wasn’t Libby’s daughter Lucy calling to announce getting kicked out of class for picking on the boys, or the thirteen-year-old twins lobbying to tour the city morgue. So far, Libby had fought off their requests, but we suspected she was weakening.

  A call from seventeen-year-old Rawlins in the middle of a school day, though, signaled a different kind of emergency.

  Libby’s voice rose with annoyance. “You mean now? Why?”

  Exasperated, she handed the phone to me. “Nora, my son says he needs to speak with you immediately.”

  I accepted Libby’s phone. “Rawlins?”

  My nephew’s voice sounded breathless. “Aunt Nora, I think you’d better come home right away.”

  The mental image of various catastrophes that could befall Blackbird Farm tore through my mind like a wildfire through tinder. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Not exactly. I got a call at school to come over here. I figured—look, you better come see what’s happening.”

  Libby was already repacking her handbag. Rarely did she want to be first on the scene of the crime if her children might be involved, so she decided she needed to recover from the morning’s shock by having an immediate pedicure.

  Emma volunteered to drive me home. She had left her pickup parked outside the inn, and after a detour to the bathroom for her, we piled into the front seat.

  We made the trip up the winding road alongside the Delaware River in record time.

  Pulling up the long driveway to Blackbird Farm, fence posts whizzing past, we saw police cars parked every which way at the back of the house under the oaks. I was glad not to see fire trucks—fire being my worst nightmare. But this couldn’t be good.

  In two hundred years, the Federal-style house had never enjoyed the full attention of well-paid carpenters who might have saved the porches from sagging, the roof from leaking or the shutters from hanging just a bit crookedly from the many windows. The chimneys had started to lean lately, a situation I fervently hoped might correct itself, since my meager salary from the newspaper could hardly pay the taxes, let alone cover repairs on the old place. The house was just one loose nail away from disaster.

  Perhaps I should have sold the house when my parents dumped it into my lap along with a property tax bill that nearly stopped my heart. But the idea of selling off family history was beyond me. I couldn’t allow the house to be bulldozed to make way for a discount store—not when George Washington’s colleagues had camped on the front lawn before their fateful boat trip across the Delaware.

  As Emma pulled around the trees, I saw with relief that the old house was still standing. But the police presence made my heart pound.

  I bailed out of Emma’s pickup and hightailed it to the back porch. I burst through the kitchen door, causing half a dozen officers to turn from their task.

  The police might as well have been invisible.

  Sitting at the table? Someone I hadn’t expected to see for months.

  “Michael?” I said, my voice strangled.

  The notorious son of New Jersey’s most celebrated crime boss gave me a lazy-eyed grin. “Hey, sweetheart. What’s for lunch?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A second later, he said sharply, “Somebody catch her.”

  I didn’t faint, but it was a close call. I saw stars against a dark, roiling backdrop of emotion. My nephew, Rawlins, obeyed Michael’s command and came to put his hand under my elbow until my head cleared.

  “You okay, Aunt Nora?”

  Emma pushed through the door and stopped dead. “Hell, Mick, what did you do? Bust out of jail?”

  My first impression was that the men in uniform were holding him down, trapping him in a chair and inflicting torture. Somebody had a screwdriver. Another man was leaning all his weight into Michael’s leg with an electric drill.

  I choked back a cry of horror.

  “It’s a monitor,” Rawlins said in my ear. An undercurrent of excitement vibrated in his low voice. “An electronic ankle monitor. He’s on house arrest now. Cool, right?”

  I tottered over to a kitchen chair and slid into it.

  From the other end of the table, Michael smiled at me, enduring the attentions of law enforcement with forced calm. The uniformed officers acted as if he were a wild animal capable of springing out of their control and going on a deadly rampage. They pinned him firmly, their jaws set.

  One glowering young officer stood apart, holding a bag of frozen peas against his face. He must have found the bag in my freezer. On the floor at his feet lay the shattered pieces of a broken drinking glass.

  Aside from the evidence of fisticuffs, I could also see that Michael had been allowed to take a shower before being subjected to this collaring ordeal. I knew he hated bringing home the smell of incarceration. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a pullover that had been hanging in my closet upstairs since summer. His hair was wet—barely disguising a truly terrible short cut that must have been done with dull clippers.

  When I could speak, I said, “How long have you known about this?”

  Michael said, “Yesterday, they told me getting early release was a possibility. State budget cuts. The facility got overpopulated. This morning, my number came up, so here I am. I phoned, but you were out.”

  He was sorry to have shocked me. His steady gaze said as much.

  Suddenly I felt sunlight dawn inside me. Michael was home. Out of jail. The relief and joy felt like daybreak in my chest. Michael’s expression melted when he saw that, and if I’d had the strength, I’d have climbed over the table and kissed him on the mouth. He’d have met me halfway.

  But he was trapped on his side of the table, and my head was still too light to make any sudden moves, so I sat very still with my knees squeezed tightly together and my hands in my lap.

  Emma set a glass of water in front of me.

  Another man, with a pair of reading glasses perched low on his nose, sat at the table, signing papers. “Okay, Mick,” he said, when he dotted his last signature. “You heard the rules. You know the perimeter—only the house, the yard as far as the road out front, the barn in the back. You have my phone number. Stay in touch.”

  “My parole officer,” Michael explained. “Nora, this is Jim Kuzik. Nora Blackbird.”

  Kuzik removed his glasses and tucked them inside his khaki jacket. He glanced around the large, rambling kitchen and up at the rafters, where a collection of antique cooking utensils hung alongside a scabbard reportedly left behind by Lafayette during a pre-Revolutionary visit. After studying the accumulated hardware, Kuzik gave me an
offensive once-over, too. “You have quite a home, Miss Blackbird. Did Washington sleep here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He carved his initials on a headboard. And the dollar he threw across a river? He borrowed it from a relative of mine.”

  Kuzik blinked. “No kidding?”

  Plenty of historical figures had passed through the hallowed Blackbird halls. A few stayed long enough to make an impression on our family history, and the anecdotes had been passed down through the generations. But at that moment, I wasn’t feeling hospitable enough to give the nickel tour. I didn’t like the way they were manhandling Michael—as if to impress their will on him one last time.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “You’ve got a leak, though.” He pointed at the shallow pond standing on the floor tiles around the kitchen sink.

  Familiar with all the drafts, pests, and other expensive issues that required money and expertise I didn’t possess, I said, “I’ll get a sponge.”

  He eyed me a moment longer, trying to determine, perhaps, if I was holding back an angry outburst, but finally deciding I was as courteous as I pretended to be. “We need your permission, as the homeowner, to finish installing the separate phone line for the monitor. You see, we make sure of Mick’s whereabouts by a wireless—”

  “Where do I sign?”

  He passed the papers across the table and skidded a pen to me, too. “Are there any guns in the house?”

  “There’s a blunderbuss hanging over the mantel in the library,” I said as picked up the pen. “Last used by Aaron Burr, we believe. He took the gunpowder with him when he left, however.”

  “Interesting. But we’ll have to ask you to remove it from the premises. Mick isn’t supposed to have access—”

  “I’ll send it out immediately.” I jotted my signature on the line at the bottom of the page and handed it back to him. “Are you gentlemen finished now? I wonder how soon you could move your vehicles off my lawn? There are heirloom varieties of flowers planted under the grass where you parked. I’ll be disappointed if the bulbs are ruined.”