Little Black Book of Murder (19 page)

Emma said, “Looks like all the Corleones are back. What's up?”

I waved at Dolph through the windshield. “I don't want to know.”

The checkpoint crew stared at Zephyr through the windshield as Emma drove past.

At the back of the house, a tow truck was depositing one of Michael's muscle cars in the barn. He stood outside, directing its placement. Beside him, Ralphie appeared to approve of the job, too. When Michael saw us arrive, he came over and helped me down out of Emma's truck.

“New car?” I asked.

“Now that the weather's warmer, it's something to work on in my spare time,” he said. “What's up?” He got a look at Emma in her skirt as she came around the hood of the truck. “Jeez, Em, where have you been? Court appearance?”

She made a rude suggestion.

Michael turned. “And this must be Zephyr.”

In an extraordinary moment, Zephyr uncurled herself from the truck and stood tall, squaring her shoulders and thrusting her heretofore unspectacular bosom into an eye-­popping display of female sexuality. The tow truck driver slipped a gear and stalled his engine. Zephyr transformed herself from a gawky, somewhat mousey young woman into a stunning supermodel with a gaze that had probably pierced the skulls of mortal men and scrambled their brains. Even Ralphie was struck motionless.

“She's going to stay with us for a little while,” I explained to Michael.

“Sure,” he said, unable to stop smiling at Zephyr.

I didn't have time to kick him in the shins, because Libby's red minivan came barreling around the corner of the house, barely missing the departing tow truck. She slid to a stop in the gravel beside Emma's pickup.

Libby bailed out and quickly unfastened little Max from his car seat. We could hear him wailing over her shouted words.

“I can't believe this is happening!” she cried, carrying the red-­faced baby around the minivan to us. “Rawlins is in
jail
! They won't let me
see
him! And now there are friends calling me every ten minutes, even
girlfriends
asking about him! What am I supposed to
say
to them? That my son is a convicted
killer
?”

“He hasn't even been arrested,” Michael soothed. “He's just there for questions. Big difference. He's a long way from being convicted. Didn't Cannoli and Sons show up?”

Instead of answering, Libby burst into tears. The floodgate of her emotional state burst like the Hoover Dam, and she wept with all the pent-­up sorrow and outrage of a mother whose promising eldest child had crushed her parental hopes and dreams. She threw back her head, and her howls matched Max's in volume. “My son has
lawyers
now!”

Michael gently pried a stunned-­into-­silence Max from her arms. I gathered up Libby in a comforting hug. She collapsed into me, weeping. I felt sympathetic tears well up inside me, too. Poor Rawlins. It was all too awful. Lucy climbed out of the minivan, also bawling, and joined us.

“Jesus,” Emma said. “It's not like Rawlins is dead.”

Whereupon Zephyr burst into tears, too, and there we were, a female group sob-­fest, observed uneasily by Michael, his crew, Max, the twins and Ralphie. They all kept a safe distance while mascara flowed.

“C'mon, Luce,” Michael said finally. “Let's you and me and Max go inside. I think you left your Candy Land game here last time. You wanna play?”

Digging her fist into her eyes, Lucy hiccoughed and nodded and reached for Michael's hand. With the baby in the other arm, he ambled both of the younger children into the house. The twins headed for the barn, whispering deviously, with an inquisitive Ralphie in hot pursuit. The security crew turned back to its duties, leaving the rest of us to bawl our hearts out. Even Emma wiped a tear from her eye.

“This is contagious,” she grumbled. “Like yawning.”

Perhaps the crying was a delayed reaction for Zephyr, too. In the middle of the group hug, she sobbed as if she'd lost a husband who meant more to her than she'd revealed in the truck. Libby clasped her to a heaving bosom, and they wept together, seeming ready to throw themselves onto a pyre.

Finally Emma said, “C'mon, you guys, this is embarrassing. Pull yourselves together.”

Libby dried her eyes with her sleeve. “You have no idea how traumatic it is, Emma, to have your child snatched from your arms. No idea at all.”

That thoughtless remark caused Emma to tell Libby where to stick her parental advice, after which she climbed into her truck and slammed the door. She gunned the engine with a roar and spun her tires in the gravel. She departed in a cloud of dust.

“That wasn't very thoughtful, Lib,” I said.

“Oh.” Libby blinked. Her nose was pink. “Well, I'll apologize tomorrow.” She turned to Zephyr. “Do I know you? You look familiar. Are you one of Nora's friends? Or are you with the Mafia?”

“Hello.” Zephyr shook Libby's hand. “Your son killed my husband.”

“No, he didn't,” Libby said. “But you must be Zephyr. Tell me, do you think fashion magazines are instruments of oppression?”

“I don't play any instruments,” Zephyr said.

There wasn't much I could do after that except herd the two of them ­toward the house.

We had enough leftover bread and a chunk of cheddar to make grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. I tended the griddle while Michael played Candy Land on the floor with Lucy, and Max crawled on his back. Lucy, intent on winning, held the cards and paid close attention to the action on the board. Max pretended Michael was a pony.

Libby and Zephyr—­two women with no filters between their first thought and what came out of their mouths—­had a heart-­to-­heart at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine left over from poker night.

Libby said, “I need to slim down just a little, but I can't seem to shave off the baby weight. You must know everything about the right foods. I mean, you're so skinny!”

Zephyr glanced down at Max, perhaps calculating how much dieting time had elapsed since his birth. He was walking now, and he wrestled with Michael like a pro. She said, “I don't really worry about dieting. I'm just naturally thin.”

Libby sighed. “I was standing in the wrong line when thin was handed out. But I have an adventurous spirit. The trouble is, men are sometimes apprehensive around spirited women.”

“Men apprehend thin women, too,” Zephyr said, slugging back wine. “In my opinion, most men are disappointments.”

“Yes,” Libby said. “In books, men are wonderful, but in real life they spray poison to kill bugs.”

On the floor, Michael glanced up from Candy Land. I shot him a firm look and shook my head. Moving his marker to Gum Drop Mountain, he wasn't in the best position to defend his gender at the moment.

“But you married your husband.” Libby refilled Zephyr's glass. “He must have had redeeming qualities.”

Zephyr shrugged. “He was a nice guy. And rich.”

“Was he exciting in bed?”

“Average.”

“Well, I'm very sorry he's dead,” Libby said. “I hope you understand my son had nothing to do with it.”

“Uh-­huh.”

“I thought he was arrested, but it turns out they're just asking questions. The police found his car, you see,” Libby said. “Abandoned on a back road near your farm. The police want to find out why it was there the night your husband was murdered. And I'm sure they're keeping an eye on him because he's a flight risk.”

“Flight risk?” I asked.

“He has a passport,” Libby informed me. “From that vacation we had in Mexico. And the police probably think we're loaded and could afford to send him out of the country.”

Zephyr looked around the kitchen. “You don't look loaded to me.”

“This is my sister's house,” Libby said. “She's not much for home improvements.”

Michael grabbed my ankle to stop me from clonking Libby over the head with a skillet.

Zephyr got up and went to the refrigerator. She opened it and peered into the emptiness.

“I'd like to find out who really killed your husband,” Libby said, pouring more wine. “I'd give that person a piece of my mind!”

Zephyr found our last spears of asparagus in the vegetable drawer. “I'm betting it was his ex.”

“Marybeth Rattigan? Oh, no, darling. She's too nice a person to want to kill her former husband. Now, I'd believe it in a heartbeat if I heard she killed
you
, maybe, but not someone she shared a life with. Why, she bore his children! Surely a woman always has a bond with the father of her offspring.”

“That bond fell apart when she went broke.” Zephyr took the asparagus to the sink and washed it.

“Marybeth can't be broke. That's impossible. She inherited half of Howie's Hotties! They sold the company for millions!”

“She spent it all.”

“On what?” Libby demanded. “How could any woman unload that much money? Does she have five hundred pairs of shoes?”

“She bought pigs. She built some fancy laboratory to breed them. You know, vegetarians will eventually convince carnivores that it's wrong to eat meat. And it costs too much to feed animals for food. So her thinking that creating a new breed of pig was a great idea just shows she isn't so smart after all. Marybitch spent all her money on a really dumb idea.”

Libby said, “She had money from her husband!”

Zephyr took a crunch of raw asparagus and shook her head. “Her prenup was worse than mine. She didn't get a nickel in the divorce. Swain paid for the house and all the kid stuff during the marriage, but she had to use all her own money to research pigs.”

“What about you?” I asked, concerned. “Zephyr, I hope you had some legal advice before you married Swain. You're not left high and dry now that he's gone?” I thought of my own position after Todd's death—­down to the last of our savings because of his drug use, then plunged into debt when my parents gave me Blackbird Farm.

Zephyr avoided my inquiring gaze and shrugged. “I'm doing okay.”

Confidently, Libby said, “Models are all rich.”

“Well,” Zephyr said, “not all. There are plenty of people out there who take advantage, y'know.”

“Let me guess,” Michael said from the floor. “Your accountant embezzled from you.”

She sat bolt upright. “How do you know that?”

“There's a lot of it going around,” Michael replied. “Are you broke?”

“I had some expenses,” she began feebly. “And then—­well, yeah, I'm kinda broke.”

“Is that why you married Swain?” Libby asked, tactless as ever. “For his money?”

“No! Well, not completely.”

Libby said, “It's easier to fall in love with a rich man than a poor one. Everything depends on what happens after you divorce him. I think Jane Austen said that.”

“According to the prenup, I couldn't divorce him for five years,” Zephyr said. “Not if I wanted to get some money when I left.”

“Now that he's dead, what happens?”

“Not much,” she said glumly. “I get the farm, but that's about it.”

There went Zephyr's motive for murdering her husband, I thought. If she stood to receive money upon his death, she'd have had a reason to stab him with a pitchfork. Of course, the farm was worth a pretty penny, so she wouldn't be destitute. Now, though, I couldn't see why Zephyr might kill Swain.

And if she had, she obviously did it with a clear conscience. The rest of us watched while she blithely ate the last of our asparagus, raw spear by raw spear. She had kicked off her shoes and revealed ragged toenails and a spectacular bunion. Then she lounged inelegantly on the chair, lazily tracing wet circles of condensation on the table with her finger as if she didn't have a care in the world.

My cell phone rang in my handbag. I dug it out and looked at the screen. Gus.

I handed the spatula to Libby and went through the butler's pantry to the dining room to take the call.

He said, “What have you got?”

I had plenty more than he knew, but I wasn't talking. “I'll call you when I'm ready.”

“You might be interested in what I dug up today.”

“Don't you have a newspaper to edit?”

“I got out my little black book of contacts and made some calls. To Italy and Dubai. My father has newspapers in those countries, perhaps you knew?”

Of course I knew. But I said, “Fascinating. What did you learn?”

“I asked about Zephyr. Are you sitting down? Five years ago, rumor has it, she killed her boyfriend.”

I sank into the chair at the head of the table. “What boyfriend?”

“A guy she met in Rome. Another model.”

“Was he tall?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Never mind.” I put my hand around the phone to muffle my words. “She
killed
him? Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. The bloke was loaded with money and good looks. They had a few laughs. Then she shot him in an argument on a yacht. The police were totally on her side, said she was getting knocked around by him and had every right to blow his brains out. So they took her name out of their report.”

“How does that happen?”

“Hasn't your thug taken you to Italy yet? To see the corruption firsthand?”

I ignored the insult. I tried and failed to imagine the young woman in my kitchen holding a gun, pulling a trigger. Killing both her father and a boyfriend. I could, however, picture her convincing the police that she was as innocent as a lamb. She had told us some appalling things in the truck, but I had fallen for her charms enough to bring her into my home.

“And to top that,” Gus went on when I didn't respond, “there's a rumor she also offed a bloke in Dubai, too, but my little black book doesn't have enough good contacts there—­yet—­to check the details.”