Blackbird 02 - Dead Girls Don't Wear Diamonds (21 page)

Was it possible Flan could profit from his wife's death? The idea made my head swim.

Michael reached across the table and put his hand on my arm. I became aware that he and Lexie were looking at me with concern. Shaken, I said, "Someone else must have had reason to kill her."

Michael sent a communicative look to Lexie.

"You think it was Flan?" She shook her head.

"He's a bumptious lug, but hardly the passionate type. Surely it takes passion to murder someone."

"Passion," Michael said, amused. He released my arm. "Okay."

"You disagree?"

"Most murderers I know aren't passionate," he said, making Lexie turn pale and me feel a twist of horror. How many murderers did he know, for heaven's sake? Unaware that what he'd said was anything unusual, he continued. "They're nuts. Or strung out. Or stupid."

Or desperate,
I thought.

"It has to be someone else," I murmured.

"Why did she doll herself up like you?" Michael asked. "That's the part I don't get."

"I do." Lexie sipped her wine. "Laura wanted to be part of the inside crowd. In Philadelphia, that means Old Money, old family. You can't get bluer blood than Nora's. She wanted to be you, darling."

"But she stole stuff," Michael said. "That's pretty low-down."

"To have something from the people she wanted to be," I guessed. "Maybe she thought she could put on our things and become one of us."

Lexie agreed. "What it takes to be accepted isn't money anymore because everybody has gobs of it. And spending it is so easy. So Laura needed something else. A symbol. Crazy, maybe, but you have to understand what it's like to be in a closed, elite society."

Michael sat back and laughed outright.

Lexie had the good manners to blush. "Oh, dear. I've done it again, haven't I?"

"What about Doe?" I asked, my turbo-charged thoughts traveling through suspects.

"You mean Dull Cooper, the trophy wife? What a
bore she is. Can she get worked up about anything more exciting than centerpieces?"

I thought about all the details in Doe's day planner—still in my possession, I remembered with a twist of guilt—and wondered if Laura had truly jeopardized Doe's chances of becoming the premier hostess she wanted to be.

"What about Oliver Cooper?" Michael asked. "Isn't he the guy who stands to lose the most if Laura's stealing becomes public knowledge?"

"He may have already bribed people to keep quiet," I agreed.

Lexie nodded. "He thinks he doesn't have to play by the rules because he's got a fat checkbook."

"But he was covered by his security detail all night," I said.
Unless,
I thought,
Jack Priestly had lied about Oliver's alibi.

Which got me to thinking about Jack, too. Was he so wrapped up in proving the president made the right choice for the cabinet post that he might have taken Laura for a real threat?

"My money's on Sidney Gutnick," Lexie said. "I bet Laura was going to expose the shady side of his business. He deserves to be horsewhipped for taking advantage of so many old ladies, like your grandmother, Nora. She kept him in business for years."

I nodded. "Sidney values his reputation very highly. But could he have strangled Laura, held her underwater until she drowned, then thrown her body in a swimming pool?"

"He and Tempeste Juarez could have done it together."

Lexie and I looked at each other and blanched at the mental picture of two people ganging up to kill a young woman. Murder wasn't a parlor game, I reminded myself. It was brutal.

Michael opened the menu. "Anybody else hungry?"

Lexie recovered first because she could be ruthless when called for. "Yes. Let's order some food to go with this lovely wine and get Nora's mind off murder for a while."

Lexie distracted us after that by firing questions at me about the Big Sister/Little Sister outing I was organizing for Halloween. The trip details were nothing special, but she pretended to be fascinated. Michael's gaze rested on me often, and I could see he was worried. I tried to relax.

After dinner, we walked outside together.

"What's going on?" Lexie asked when we encountered a crowd on the sidewalk. Flashbulbs exploded in our eyes, and we could hear the rushing click of cameras. "Some movie star must be in town."

She looked around for someone famous.

"Oh, shit," said Michael.

With a shock, I realized the photographers were taking his picture. He gave me a little shove, but it was too late. Lexie and I had been photographed with the son of the notorious Big Frankie Abruzzo.

The first person to show me the newspaper photograph of myself and Lexie Paine alongside the future boss of the New Jersey underworld was my sister Libby.

"See? I knew it would come to this!" She flapped the paper in my face as she drove. "The picture even managed to catch him squinting. He looks terrible!"

"Don't say that," I told her. "I'll have to get your kneecaps whacked."

"Don't joke about this. I thought you broke things off with him. He's dragging you down, Nora. And isn't Lexie mortified?"

"I think she's pleased as punch. She'll probably get new clients out of this publicity."

Libby had picked me up on her way to her Lamaze session with the plan of dropping me at my weekly Israeli commando self-defense class. We'd have lunch afterwards. Her boys had come along and were poking each other in the backseat while they argued over who had the cooler costume, Spiderman or Batman. When we reached the Episcopal church, I threw the newspaper on the seat and bailed out of the minivan ahead of her. The twins, Harcourt and Hilton, hoisted their camera gear out of the van, still squabbling.

"Stop it, you two." Libby got out of the van with surprising speed, grabbed two large white pillows and waddled after me. "Hey, I learned something for you at my doctor's office yesterday."

"You went back to the doctor's office? Already? Is something wrong?"

"I had some Braxton-Hicks, that's all. Nothing out of the ordinary." She caught her breath and shoved her unruly hair out of her face with one hand. The other arm clamped the pillows. "But I learned a tidbit about Laura Cooper."

I pulled Libby away from the crowd walking around us—the self-defense class and the pregnant women with their pillow-carrying coaches. We went over to the steps of the church sanctuary. "What did you learn?"

She dropped one of her pillows on the top step. "Well, I can't be one hundred percent sure, of course, because doctors and nurses have all those confidentiality things going on, which seems pretty silly when the woman is dead, but—"

"What did you learn, Libby?"

She plopped down on the pillow and blew a sigh. "She was pregnant."

I took the other pillow from her. "Are you sure?"

Libby worked at getting comfortable. "Yes. Tara wouldn't say anything to me, of course, but while I was waiting, I heard her talking to the nurse in the next exam room. You know—while they changed the paper on the table. So when Tara made me some tea, I asked her. She danced around and claimed I must have misunderstood, but I kept pestering her. She finally admitted it. See? You're not the only detective in the family."

At last I noticed Libby was looking less than her perky pregnant self. Her face looked puffy and she was gray around the eyes. The beer keg that was her stomach seemed lower, if that were possible. "There's no need for you to start detecting, Lib. I think you have your hands full at the moment."

"Not to mention my bladder," she added, stretching out her legs uncomfortably.

"You okay?"

"Sure. Getting ready to pop, that's all." She massaged her belly as if it ached.

I tried to wedge the other pillow under her. "The doctor says you're all right?"

"Yes, of course. Gaining too much weight, but what else is new?"

I decided to make one last attempt to get her to see the light. "I'm worried about you, Libby. You need to take care of yourself. Maybe I should stay with you until the baby is born. Give you a hand around the house and with the kids."

"That's silly. Rawlins is being surprisingly useful these days. But. . . well, maybe you could come after the baby's born."

"It's a deal. Seriously, have you thought more about delivering at the hospital instead of the Jacuzzi?"

She sighed again. "I had to give up on the Jacuzzi idea. I'm so big, there's no room for any water. I'm going a different route now."

"A different route?"

"Yes." She brightened. "Did you know that some women actually have orgasms at the moment of delivery?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"No! I've been reading. A truly centered, peaceful childbirth can culminate in a very powerful sexual experience. I've been working with my sensual yoga tapes. I think it's quite possible. Would you be interested in going with me to one of those X-rated bookstores along the highway to look for—"

"No, Libby, I wouldn't."

She looked disappointed. "I didn't think so. Well, I'll manage without gadgets, I guess. Of course, the big drawback is my coaching."

"You haven't found a coach?"

"I have. Two, as a matter of fact." She became absorbed by the condition of her cuticles at that moment.

"Am I supposed to guess who they are?"

She slanted a quick look up at me. "You're going to disapprove."

"Since when has that mattered to you?" I softened. "Try me."

"Okay," she said. "RickandGabe."

"What?"

"The florists. They have a shop on—"

"I know who they are. They're very sweet men, but why—"

"Oh, I know they're not exactly Harrison Ford and Russell Crowe, but they're very interested in the whole process. They're thinking of finding a surrogate to have their child, you see. They're very open-minded about the whole sensual angle, too, and I think they're going to work out fine. I'm not terribly attracted to either one of them, of course, but maybe that's a good thing in the long run."

"I'm sure it is."

"But yesterday," she said, "I discovered hypno-birthing."

"Do I want to know what that is?"

"Hypnosis! I met this very interesting man at the grocery store who told me—"

"Libby," I said, "picking up weirdos at the grocery isn't what I meant by taking care of yourself."

"Oh, nonsense. Everybody is nice to pregnant women."

Not everybody,
I thought, reminded of Laura Cooper's pregnancy. The question was, who fathered her child?

And who had known about her condition before she died?

Chapter 12

I had a phone message waiting for me when I got home that afternoon.

"Nora," Stan Rosenstatz said, trying to sound jolly, which was instantly suspicious. Stan's voice usually sounded as if he were headed for the gallows. "How about stopping in the office as soon as you can?"

That didn't sound good. I phoned Reed, who came to pick me up in the Town Car. We arrived at the
Intelligencer
offices shortly after 6:00
P.M.
I took the elevator up and met many of my colleagues as they departed after putting the finishing touches on the Sunday edition.

Stan was busy with another writer, but he spotted me when I entered the large room. He looked like a gawky stork—long, skinny legs holding up a lanky body that had subsisted for too many years on newsroom coffee and stale bagels. He had tufts of gray hair on a smooth, shining skull, and his hands toyed nervously with a yellow pencil. He finished his business with the other writer, then came over to me, tucking his pencil behind his ear. His brown sweater-vest had begun to unravel, I noticed.

And he couldn't meet my eye.

"Come into my office, Nora."

He even closed the door behind us.

"What's going on, Stan?"

"Sit down. Be comfortable." He hurried around his desk and sat on his squeaky swivel chair. Still, he couldn't look at me. He began shuffling papers. "I want you to know this has nothing to do with how I feel about you. You've been doing a great job for us, and I've been more than pleased with your work."

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

"The general manager feels we need to make a change. I wish I could do something, but this has come from the top. We're going to put you on temporary leave, Nora. I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"It's complicated, but the paper's reputation is at stake."

"How?" I demanded.

"The publisher is unhappy that you—"

"Wait a minute. It's because my picture was in the paper, right? I'm being fired because somebody thinks I'm connected to the Abruzzo family?"

He let out an explosive breath. "The Abruzzo connection makes it worse, but it's really the whole Cooper thing. The Laura Cooper thing. The general manager felt we shouldn't be printing your byline if you're a murder suspect."