Money To Burn (5 page)

“I might be happy to help you,” I said, then thought of her bank account. “Hell, I might even be ecstatic. But you have to be straight with me so I know whaaceo I knot I’m getting into.”

She paused, then blurted it all out before her nerve failed. “I thought maybe you could find out for sure if he was having an affair before he died and also tell me if my father had him killed.”

“What?” I sat, stunned. “You think your father had him killed?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and this time the tears hit like Niagara Falls. I didn’t even try to stop her. I heard a shuffling in the halls and knew that Bobby D. was eavesdropping outside. He doesn’t normally boost his big butt up unless he has to go to the bathroom, but the Ferrari had aroused his interest. He may even have recognized Lydia Talbot from her photographs in the newspapers.

While she cried, I occupied myself calculating what I would charge her for taking on the case. Thomas Nash’s retainer had gone toward rent and food, but a new month was looming and neither Bobby nor I were into starvation. I didn’t want to gouge her, but I was having visions of working out of the bathroom at the Greyhound Bus station and, believe me, the scenario wasn’t pretty to contemplate. By the time she quieted down, I had decided on a generously fair fee and was busy thanking whatever gods hovered above for sending me an excuse to avenge Thomas Nash’s death while still fattening our bank account.

“About your father,” I prompted, when her fresh tears had subsided to a ladylike trickle.

“He was furious that Tom and I were engaged,” she explained in a tiny voice. “Especially since Thomas had quit T&T and gone out on his own. I first met Tom when he worked at T&T, but we didn’t go out until after he founded his own company. We met again at a benefit for Duke Hospital. He was very attractive in a different sort of way, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded. I knew.

“Anyway, we had dinner the next night and one thing led to another. I had to do a lot of the leading, if you want to know the truth. Sometimes I wondered if he’d ever even had a girlfriend before. I didn’t tell Daddy about him, but somehow he found out. He always does. And he was furious. He said Tom was just using me to get information on T&T. That was silly. I don’t have anything to do with the company, so what could I tell him? Then Daddy said he only wanted my money, but Tom was earning plenty with King Buffalo. Daddy just didn’t understand.”

I had a feeling Daddy understood plenty.

“Were you aware that your fiancée was going to testify against T&T in the Hargett case?” I asked, “And that he had a lawsuit pending against T&T, asking for a greater share of the Clean Smoke royalties?”

She nodded. “Daddy midted. “Daade a big deal about that, too.” She sighed as if her father had been most tiresome. “He forbid me to see Thomas anymore.”

“And when you wouldn’t obey him, he went ballistic?” I suggested.

She nodded. “It was after Daddy heard that Tom might be testifying against T&T in the Hargett case that things really got rough.”

“How did he know about that?” I asked, curious as to how Randolph Talbot had found out so quickly. “Did you tell him?”

She shook her head. “No, Tom didn’t even tell me when he decided to testify for the Hargetts. He never talked to me about work. Daddy found out some other way. He knows everything. I thought I might have to move off the family compound, it got so bad. That was just a month ago, and now I’m afraid that Daddy may have had something to do with…” Her lower lip started to tremble.

“You realize that this man you loved so much could have cost your family an incredible bundle of money?” I said. “In the millions and millions. It’s no wonder your father was upset. Why did you let yourself get into such a mess?”

She twisted a ratty Kleenex between her fingers and stared at the floor as she spoke. “You’ll think I’m snobby if I tell you.”

“Would you rather I thought you were snobby or stupid?” I asked.

“Neither.” She stared at the floor near my feet and explained. “My whole life, men have come after me,” she said. “From the time I was eleven years old and even before that. Some of them asked me out because their fathers put them up to it, especially when they were too young to figure it out for themselves. Others did it on their own, but for the exact same reason.”

“For the money?” I surmised.

She nodded.

“You give yourself too little credit,” I said. “You’re a beautiful woman.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” she said. “It’s still not loving me. Not one of the men I ever dated, not one of them until Thomas, ever saw beyond the Talbot name or my face to who I really was inside. I could tell. I’m no idiot. They all wanted to visit the house, meet Daddy, make a good impression, land a great job, get their hands on my share of the money. I was instant fame, instant fortune, instant career success or, at best, instant decoration for their arm. I hated every one of them. I still do. They’re phony and I’d kill myself before I’d spend the rest of my life with any of them.”

“And Tom wasn’t like that?” I prompted, envying her passion but thinking that she was a little naive for her age.

“When I met Thomas at that benefit, I don’t think he connected me with those Talbots. He didn’t even remember meeting me once before. And when he did find out who my father was, he didn’t care. Don’t you see? He was maybe the one man in the world in danger of being destroyed rather than being helped by the Talbot name. And he loved me anyway.”

I shrugged. “That’s a little unfair. He may have passed your test, but he was the only one in a position to take it.”

“He saw me for a person,” she insisted. “He didn’t even care what I weighed or what I wore. No one else was like that.”

“You’re expecting an awful lot from men in general,” I said. “They are, after all, only men.”

“I know,” she answered in a small voice. “But they ought to at least try to pretend those other things matter.”

True. That alone would be enough to get most of them laid on a regular basis. “So you think your father had Tom killed for any number of reasons?” I asked.

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out.”

“I hate to sound like a broken record,” I said. “But if your father’s involved, that’s what the cops are for.”

She shook her head. “If my father is involved, the Durham cops will get nowhere. He would have thought of that long ago and made sure to prevent it.”

“And you think I might be able to figure it out when the cops can’t?”

She nodded. “Because you don’t have to follow the law.”

Ah. So that was it. She was smarter than I gave her credit for. I upped my asking price to account for the moral gray factor.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want to find out if Tom was having an affair before he died, to make sure that what you had between the two of you was real? And, you want me to find out if your father had him killed?”

She nodded, eyes wide.

“What do you want me to do with the information if I obtain it?” I asked. “Obviously, if I find out your father did kill him, I have. ” him, I to go to the police.”

“I know. I just want you to tell me first, before the news goes public. I’ve thought about this a lot, all day and all night. If Daddy did have something to do with it, he has to pay. I love my father, but…” She stopped to consider her choice of words. “I don’t know that he really loves me back. He isn’t capable of it. He just sort of marches through this world he has created and expects everyone to do exactly as he says. He never smiles, he never laughs, he just evaluates people to see what he can get out of them and sometimes drinks a little too much.”

“Drinks a little too much?” I repeated. In the South, depending on who you’re talking to, “drinks a little too much” can mean anything from takes a single glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve to pisses his pants on a regular basis.

“It really is only now and then,” she explained. “He’s not an alcoholic or anything. He just wants to forget.”

“Forget what?” I persisted.

“Forget my mother dying and… maybe, forget that woman he married after she was gone.”

Great. An evil stepmother. I upped my price even more. If I had to deal with Cruella de Ville, I wanted to get paid for it.

“Got any brothers or sisters?” I asked, since I like to know who or what is going to fall from the family tree when I give it a good shake.

“Two brothers. Jake is in college and Haydon is twelve.”

“Half brothers or full brothers?”

“Full.” She paused. “Why?”

“I’ll need to look into all that stuff,” I warned her. “And before I agree to take the case, I want you to think very hard about whether or not you really want to know what I might find out.”

“I do want to know,” she said immediately. “I need to know. I have to get on with my life and I don’t think I can unless I know the truth.”

“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “If it’s the truth you’re after, then I can help. But it may end up costing you a lot.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Money is nothing to me.”

I wasn’t referring to money, but while we were on the subject: how come only people who have tons of money ever “>< money say it means nothing to them?

“Do you know why Tom hired me in the first place?” I asked.

She nodded. “I was the one who told him that maybe he ought to hire a private investigator to see who was behind it.”

“You thought your father was behind the harassment, too?” I guessed.

She nodded again. “I need to find out if I’m right.”

If she was willing to take on the purse strings in her family, who was I to argue? “Okay,” I decided. “Let’s get started.” I pulled out my notepad. “Tell me everything you know about how and when Thomas was harassed in the weeks leading up to his death.”

“Oh,” she said in a voice grown suddenly small. “I don’t know anything about the specifics.”

“Nothing?” I said.

“Not really. Thomas didn’t want me to know. He said it would scare me. He said he’d take care of it and not to worry.”

Had that been his real motivation, I wondered? Or had Nash known Lydia’s father was behind it? It might account for why he dropped the harassment suit. Maybe he’d wanted to minimize the pain caused to her family.

“You could talk to his lawyer,” she suggested. “I think he knew everything that happened.”

“I thought he had decided not to press charges,” I said. “What was he doing with a lawyer?”

“He did decide to drop the suit against my father. But before that, he went as far as having a lawyer draw up the papers.”

“Did you tell him to drop the harassment suit against your father?” I asked bluntly.

She shook her head. “I would never tell Thomas what to do. Plus, I won’t be intimidated by my father. Thomas never even told me he was dropping the suit until it was a done deal.”

Nash had certainly been protective of his fiancée. I thought I understood why. Lydia Talbot had an earnest innocence about her, as if she had been protected from the ugly side of life, as well she might have been. Only a true cynic would want to be the one to burst her bubble. As cynical as I was, I didn’t want to be the one.

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“So you think the lawyer will know the details about the harassment?” I said.

“I’m sure the court papers contain specific incidents. Maybe you could find some clues there.”

“Worth a shot,” I agreed. “What’s the lawyer’s name?”

“Harry Ingram,” she said. “Or maybe it was Henry. I’m not quite sure. I’ve probably run into him at social events; I know his name is on the letterhead of a lot of the causes I support. But I can’t put a face to the name. I think his office is in Brightleaf Square, so you should be able to find him.”

I wrote the lawyer’s name down and asked her a few more questions about her relationship with Nash. She had never met his parents or any of his siblings. I found that a bit odd, but chalked it up to two very busy schedules. Either that or Nash had some skeletons he hoped to keep firmly shut in his family closet.

When I was done, I walked Lydia Talbot out of the office just in case Bobby D. decided to take advantage of her grief, though I didn’t think a multi-million-dollar heiress would ever be that desperate for male companionship. I promised to keep in touch, accepted the retainer check when it was discreetly offered and watched her zoom away in the Ferrari. She drove down McDowell Street well over the limit, smoothly zipping in and out of traffic.

I watched her squeal around a comer as I thought about my first impression of her. There was something about her that was fragile and innocent, yet also spoiled and dangerously beguiling, like a rare orchid that smelled so impossibly sweet, it made you think of decay instead of beauty. 

Five minutes after Lydia Talbot left, I was on the phone to Maynard Pope. He would tell me nothing.

“Come on,” I pleaded. “Just a scrap to go on.”

“I sent you a big bucks client,” he droned in his nasal voice. “That’s enough favors for this month.”

“Come on, Maynard. I can owe you one.”

“What could you possibly do for me?” he asked.

That was a good question. Even I had my standards. Then I remembered something Lydia had said.