Money To Burn (19 page)

He laughed. “Don’t look at me. Every time my birthday or Christmas rolls around, some friend gives me a copy. I mean, have you seen it? It’s depressing as shit. But they think it’s going to be inspirational or something. Look around you. Do you see Jane Fonda anywhere?”

My eyes locked on his. “The point being what?” I asked slowly.

“Well,” he said, his voice trailing off as he grinned. “Five of those copies are the director’s version with special scenes cut from the original.”

“Special scenes?” I asked.

/sp=“0”>

“Very special scenes.”

I started to smile in spite of myself. “I suppose you’ve watched those scenes over and over,” I said.

“Not just over and over,” he promised. “Forwards and backwards, too.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“You’re bad,” I admonished him, bursting into laughter. “No wonder no one will go out with you. You scare women away.”

“Maybe, but why do I think that you don’t scare so easily?” He was almost cheerful, sensing the tide of battle was turning.

He started to wheel toward me and I did something I rarely do: I panicked.

“Here’s my card,” I said quickly, thrusting it into his hand. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

His glance dropped to my business card. “It has your home phone number on it,” he remarked.

“Preprinted,” I quickly pointed out, inane comments having suddenly become my specialty.

“Don’t worry, Casey Jones, Private Investigator,” he promised, reading from the card. He looked up. “I think you’ll find it’s pretty easy to run away from my advances if you don’t want to be near me.”

“I gotta go,” was all I could think of to say.

“There’s a completely modern bathroom through that door,” he said, pointing. “Grip bars and all.”

“No, I mean I have to go. As in go.”

He started to say something, but stopped himself. Instead, he simply gestured toward the outside door. “Forgive me if I don’t walk you to the door.”

“Stop making jokes like that,” I told him. I gathered my knapsack and calculated whether to touch him or not. In the end, I patted him on the shoulder like some horse’s ass elderly uncle then backed out of the door, trying to smile. His shoulder had been hot under my hand, alive and hard and electric.

“Thanks for your help,” I said, ignoring his stare.

“See you around,” he answered in a tone I could not read.

“It was nice meeting you,” I added. “Really.” What in the world was coming over me? If I stayed another minute, I’d rip off my clothes and throw myself into his lap.

I fled to my car and started the engine, anxious to put some space between us so I could think. As I was pulling out of the dirt yard, I heard someone calling my name. The sleepy hound dog named Zee Zee raised his head and stared lazily at the front door. Burly Nash was sitting in his wheelchair in the doorway, shouting after me.

I rolled down the window. “What did you say?” I asked, torn by an intense desire to flee and a need to look at him just a moment longer.

“I said, ‘You can run, Casey Jones,’ ” he repeated. “‘But you cannot hide.’ “

He was still laughing at me as I headed down the bumpy dirt road, my mind in a tumble and my other body parts just as confused.

“Geeze, babe,” Bobby D. greeted me back at the office. “What’s that weird look on your face? You look like you overdosed on Krispy Kreme doughnuts.”

“Nothing,” I mumbled. “What’s up?”

“No other money floating around this case of yours,” he said cheerfully. “The Talbots all have clean credit records. None of them are hurting for cash.”

He reverently unwrapped a virulently pink Hostess Snowball as he spoke. Bobby eats those things like a cat eats a mouse. First, he lovingly licks the coconut until it lies flat in the same direction. Then he takes the outer marshmallow skin in his teeth and peels it back so he can nibble at the cake underneath. After a few seconds of anticipation, he worms his tongue into the center and sucks out the cream filling before gobbling the rest as fast as he can.

I sat there, staring, as he plowed through two packages of Snowballs in a row.

“Want one?” he offered, pulling a fresh pack from his desk d>

Oh, what the hell—why not? I unwrapped one and bit into it. It was sticky, sweet and vaguely comforting.

“You in love or something?” Bobby D. asked suspiciously.

I was astonished. “Why would you say that?”

“You got a faraway look in your eyes and you keep smiling at your shoes.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t think so, babe. You want to know what I think?”

“No.”

He plowed right on. “I think there’s something in the air,” he confided. “I see people all around me falling in love right and left. You think maybe some of those Research Triangle Park scientists are spraying Viagra into the air?”

“Bobby,” I pointed out sensibly. “If they were spraying Viagra into the air, all hell would be breaking out in the local rest homes, now wouldn’t it?”

This reply plunged him into several moments of deep thought, buying me enough time eat my Snowball in peace and think about Burly Nash.

“You got about a zillion messages,” Bobby announced as an afterthought, following several moments of synchronized munching.

I sighed in exasperation. “Bobby, why don’t you ever tell me things like that first?” I complained. “A zillion messages is significant, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “I figure it’s more important to keep your blood sugar up.”

Up? One bite and my blood sugar had hit the stratosphere. I shook my head, annoyed, and clomped back to my office in a show of privacy. Bobby didn’t care that I was pissed. He was too happy I’d left him a bonus Snowball.

There were not a zillion messages, but there were five. Every single one of them from Lydia Talbot. She sounded increasingly hysterical with each call. I phoned her back immediately and was put through by Winslow, her butler.

“He’s after me,” she wailed into the receiver.

Coloe that I
“Take a deep breath,” I ordered her. “And tell me what’s happened.”

“Whoever killed Tom is after me now,” she explained, words tumbling over other words in her fright. “I’ve been getting phone calls all day, from some guy using a creepy muffled voice. He uses different names of my friends to get past Winslow—and that means he knows who I hang out with. Winslow says he sounds normal at first, but when I get on the line he says terrible things in this scary, hollow voice.”

“Like what?” I demanded.

“He’ll kill my little brother if I don’t leave Durham immediately. Or he’ll come into my bedroom at night and put a knife in my heart. He says I have to leave town tonight or I’m going to die. He says I should give up and move to Savannah, where it’s safer.”

“Savannah?” I asked.

“It’s where my mother is buried,” Lydia explained. “I was there the day that Thomas died. I go every year on the anniversary of her death and put yellow roses on her grave. The caller knew it.” There was silence and I could feel her tension through the phone line. “I think someone’s outside my window,” she whispered, close to panic.

“Stop it,” I ordered her. “You’ll make yourself crazy. You’re surrounded by a ten-foot fence and armed guards at the gate. No one is outside your window.”

Too bad I didn’t believe my own words.

Her silence lengthened. She remained unconvinced. “I guess not,” she finally said. “I don’t hear anything more. It must have been the gardener.”

“Listen,” I told her calmly. “I’m going to speak to the front gate guards. No one will get in or out unless the guards know them personally.”

“But what if the caller is someone I know?” she wailed.

She had me there.

“It’s going to be okay,” I promised. “Can you go out of town? It might not be a bad idea.”

“I could, except for tomorrow night,” she answered. “I can’t just up and leave. There’s this big charity ball at Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh. I’m chairing it, so I can’t possibly skip it. It’s to fund prep school scholarships for underprivileged kids. I have to be there. It’s what I’ve been working toward all year. We may raise almost a million dollars.”

“Okay,” I said, thinki C sa She reng fast. “Tell me more about the event.” How was I going to protect her in the crowd?

“It’s like a debutante ball, only it’s for women who’ve already made their debut. It’s going to be just like the night they first made their debuts, only now they’ll be thirty or forty or fifty years old. Some of the families have three generations of women bowing at once. The idea has caught on like wildfire. People are paying a thousand dollars each just to attend and another five thousand to take a bow. We have nearly five hundred people coming. I absolutely have to be there.”

Oh my God. Hundreds of aging debutantes in the same ballroom. A mosh pit for matrons-in-training.

“I have to be there,” she repeated into my silence.

“What about before that?” I asked. “Can you stay home until it begins?”

“I need to make a million phone calls and have my hair done and…”

“Do it all from home,” I ordered her. “And I’ll be with you tomorrow night.” My God, the sacrifices I make. It was the last place on earth I would feel comfortable, but Lydia was hyperventilating on me and I had to do something.

“Would you?” she pleaded. “I would feel so much better with a bodyguard.”

She was right, but why did it have to be me? Nothing strokes the old ego like being surrounded by five hundred people who have more money and education than you, not to mention better breeding and better teeth. I was going to feel like an old nag on the way to the glue factory taking her last look at the thoroughbred pasture.

I made a stab at weaseling out of it. “I didn’t do Tom a lot of good as a bodyguard. Maybe we should get you a guy who could act as your escort.”

“I have an escort. Besides, I trust you,” Lydia insisted. “You’re the only person I trust, Casey. I don’t even trust my own family right now.”

“What do I wear?” I asked, at a loss. How the hell would I fit in?

“I don’t know. I can’t think. Just wear a dress. No, wait. Come over here tomorrow. We’ll alter one of mine. My maid can do it.”

“We’ll have to alter at least two of yours if it’s going to fit me,” I warned.

“We can do it,” she said. “Mariela can do anything with a needle and thread. Just don’t let me be killed by this maniac, C Chis=“24”>

I noticed she wasn’t as concerned about her other brother. Of course, judging from his performance in the library the other night, he wasn’t alone in the world.

“You’re going to be okay,” I assured her. “But after the ball, leave town until we figure this out, promise? Only not to Savannah. To someplace that no one else knows about. And you’ll stay away until I say it’s okay? Agreed?”

“Yes,” she said. “This is terrible. This is the most terrible thing that’s ever happened to me. First, someone kills Tom. And now, someone is after me and I don’t even know what I did wrong.”

“We’ll take things one step at a time,” I said. “Starting with tomorrow night. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Wait. Don’t go yet,” she blurted. “You need an escort.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“You need an escort. Everyone there will be part of a couple. It’s tradition. All the women have escorts, even the youngest ones. You’ll stick out too much if you don’t. And he has to wear a tuxedo.”

“I know how to alligator wrestle,” I explained. “I can shoot the eyes out of a snake at one hundred paces. And the last guy that crossed me ended up with his balls full of buckshot. But I really don’t know anyone with a tux who’d be willing to go with me to something like this, especially on twenty-four-hour notice.”

“You have to find someone,” she insisted, her panic rising again. “I don’t want anyone to know I’m being guarded. Do you know what the newspapers would do with that information? It’s been hard enough keeping my relationship with Thomas a secret from the press so that I can mourn in private. But reporters are starting to hear rumors.

It’s just a matter of time. I have no privacy to begin with, being the daughter of—”

“Okay, okay,” I assured her, cutting off her hysteria. “I’ll find someone.”

I mentally rearranged my schedule so that I could be with Lydia. But I couldn’t afford to put off seeing Harry Ingram, Nash’s former attorney, not when it had taken so long to get in to see him.

“Don’t go out in the morning,” I ordered her. “Not even for coffee at Foster’s. And wait for me in the afternoon. I have to question Tom’s lawyer before I come to your house. He might know something about the harassment.”
C/spI’ll fin

“Okay,” she agreed. “I promise.”

“Good. Now put me through to the front gate guards.”

I hated to hang up when she was still in shock, but I figured she was safe for the time being. She was surrounded by a squadron of servants, a wrought-iron gate, and acres of open land. And, unfortunately for her, her family.