School of Fortune (28 page)

Despite its rigid lines, the uniform was surprisingly comfortable. The colors didn't look as awful together as Pippa had imagined. She wished Olivia hadn't told her about the pigeons, though.

Olivia studied the result: still too feminine. “Ah! One moment.”

In a sewing table drawer she found a pair of oversized tortoiseshell glasses recognizable the world over. “Yves left them here on his last visit. They are among my most prized possessions.” She poised them on Pippa's nose. “Perfect.”

“But I can't see a thing.”

“Take them to a one-hour store. Change the lenses to glass.” Olivia got her cell phone. “Signora Bowes, this is Olivia Villarubia-Thistleberry. I have found a majordomo for you. His name is Cosmo du Piche. You will see him tomorrow morning. Please wire full payment to my account at once.” Olivia knew all fourteen digits by heart. “He will not ring your doorbell until the funds have cleared.” With a triumphant smile, she slipped the phone back into her pocket. “Well, that's settled.”

“Cosmo du Piche?”

“My true love. He threw himself off a cliff when he learned I had married the cockroach. Go to your room and pack, Lotus. I'll book you a flight.”

“I'd rather drive, if you don't mind. Immediately.”

“But you must be in Las Vegas tomorrow morning.”

“It's only six hundred miles. I've got a fast car.”

“Very well.” Olivia began gathering spare accoutrements for her protege. “You come from a superior background. I'm sure you will be a success. And please remember that you are a man.”

Think diploma.
“I'll do my best.”

In short order Pippa kissed the dogs goodbye and headed south.

A
lthough she couldn't imagine why anyone would want to kidnap her, and she couldn't remotely imagine her husband, Moss, springing for a ransom should a kidnapping occur, Leigh Bowes had hired a bodyguard when it became apparent that she was the only socialite in Las Vegas without one. Samson was a disaster from day one. Sure, he looked impressive, but an armed man hulking six feet away at all times was, to say the least, intrusive. Plus he was a lummox. Each time Samson trailed her through the kitchen, he knocked something major off the counter, driving Rudi the chef bonkers. Samson insisted on locking Leigh into her bedroom every night, for her own protection. He ate nothing but aged prime rib. Nevertheless, since most female members of the Las Vegas Country Club had bodyguards and Leigh had been trying for eight gut-wrenching months to become a member of that superelite, she endured his company.

Unfortunately her majordomo had not been as flexible. He had recently marched into her bathroom, shut the door, and said, “Either Samson goes or I go.”

Leigh was aghast: in one week she was throwing a birthday party for her bichon frise, Titian. Three hundred guests, their bodyguards, and their dogs had been invited. “What's gotten into you, Ferdinand?”

“He cleans his guns in the kitchen. Rudi hates that. He leaves his shavings in the sink and he's formed an intimate liaison with Kerry.” The Irish maid. “I'm constantly walking in on them
in flagrante.”

“How is that possible? Samson is with me eighteen hours a day.”

Ferdinand peeped through the keyhole into the master bedroom. “They're defiling your mattress as we speak, madam.”

Leigh passed a hand over her face. “You put me in a difficult position, Ferdinand.”

He had said nothing further. He simply packed his bags and left. Out shopping, Leigh didn't even know Ferdinand was gone until that evening, when her martini failed to materialize at the stroke of five. Chaos had immediately overtaken Casa Bowes. Canceling Titian's birthday party was out of the question: such a faux pas would nuke her chances of membership in the Las Vegas Country Club. Leigh had called every employment agency in Nevada, to no avail. She had finally thrown herself at the mercy of her friend Dusi Damon, one of the last people she would even want to know about the catastrophe. Dusi had pointed her at Olivia Unpronounceable-dash-Supercilious in Aspen, who had coughed up a replacement after days of suspense. Leigh now owed Dusi so big time it bordered on moral bankruptcy.

Paranoid at losing yet another household employee, Leigh had said nothing to Samson or Kerry about their tawdry behavior. She didn't dare tell her husband about the fornication problem because Moss had never wanted a bodyguard in the first place. He already thought Casa Bowes had three servants too many, cheap bastard. Moss was even ticked that Leigh was replacing Ferdinand: in his opinion, she was perfectly capable of dusting the furniture herself. Then after all that ranting, he had blown a million dollars at auction for a tiny Poussin still life. Leigh was ready to kill him.

She was eating breakfast in her atrium, glancing through the Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue, when the doorbell rang. “Could you get that, Samson?” she asked after the third ring. “Kerry must still be tying bows on all the dog biscuits.”

“Only if you come with me,” he replied. His contract forbade him to wander more than six feet from his charge.

“Damn it!” Leigh threw down her antique silver grapefruit spoon. “Must I do everything myself?” She flung open the door. On her stoop stood a tall, slender—fellow?—in a gray jacket and iridescent green-purple silk shorts. He sported enormous eyeglasses and an Inspector Clouseau mustache.

“Signora Bowes.” He bowed. “Cosmo du Piche at your service.”

This was her sixty-five-thousand-dollar Superman? Leigh tried not to laugh. The boy looked seriously myopic. His voice was high as a girl's. “Come in. Did you have a nice flight?”

“I drove, thank you.”

Cosmo didn't mention where he had driven from and Leigh didn't ask. Olivia had obviously filched him from another hapless society hostess; the less Leigh knew about that, the more innocent she could pretend to be when word got out. “Where might I park?” he asked.

Leigh was nonplussed to see a blue Maserati in her driveway. “Leave your car there for the moment. My chauffeur will put it in the garage.”

As she spoke, a Brinks armored truck pulled up behind the Maserati. Four armed guards hopped out, unlocked the rear doors, and carried a large crate to the front door. “Moss Bowes residence?”

“Yes. I'm Mrs. Bowes.”

“We have a painting.”

That stupid Poussin! Leigh fought an overwhelming desire to refuse delivery. “Put it in the den.”

“Not so fast.” Samson barred their path. “Remove your weapons first.”

The guards looked at him as if he had asked them to remove their gonads. “We can't do that while the painting is in our custody. Insurance regulations.”

“And I can't let you in the house with weapons. Security regulations.”

No one moved for a full minute. Leigh looked as if she had been shot. “Someone please do something!” she wailed.

Cosmo du Piche had met his first imbroglio. “I suggest you call your office,” Pippa told the Brinks man. “And you call yours,” she told Samson. “Let's get a dialogue going.”

“Who's this bozo?” the security guy asked.

“My majordomo,” Leigh replied. “Do as he says.”

Chortling, the guard called his office. So did Samson. The situation was explained at least a dozen times to various managers. Brinks presidents phoned Goliath Protection Services presidents. Chubb agents were consulted. Lawyers were consulted. The Brinks men didn't budge from the doorstep, nor did Leigh, Samson, and Pippa budge from the foyer. After a passing patrol car got into the act, the dilemma was reexplained, with considerably less patience. By the time the police checked everyones license to carry firearms, Leigh's front door had been wide open for thirty minutes. Her living room was at least eighty degrees and getting dustier by the minute. “Could we speed this up?” she asked, irritatedly tapping her foot.

Her cell phone rang. It was her art dealer in New York, advising Leigh that he had been rousted from bed at noon by Chubb, Brinks, and Sotheby's. She was mortified.

After the policemen left, no one spoke. Pippa took the opportunity to study the decor. Leigh's living room and foyer were stuffed with Louis Quatorze furniture that no human had dared sit upon for a century. A tremendous rococo harpsichord, the inside of its lid painted with a country scene, occupied a corner of the grand parlor. Dark paintings lined the apricot walls. Each canvas depicted a bird either dead with root vegetables, aloft in the wild, or cupped in a nobleman's hands. The place was pretentious, boring, and useless. Pippa noticed Leigh waiting anxiously for her pronouncement. “Beautiful,” she smiled.

Leigh was an attractive thirtysomething blonde. She wore a large diamond in an aggressive setting. Her cerise sequined halter and four-inch heels seemed a bit much for this hour of the morning but she carried both well. She had dancer's legs. Although her exquisitely applied makeup had left no pore behind, she would have looked prettier with just moisturizer. Same with the jewelry: one knockout chain and bracelet would have looked better than the dozens garnishing her neck and wrists.

An apricot-colored Mercedes limousine squeezed into the driveway behind the Maserati and the Brinks car. Pippa saw a man leave the driver's seat. Tall, dark, handsome. He wore an apricot polo shirt, same as Samson's, with
CASA BOWES
embroidered in brown above the alligator. With a strange dread Pippa watched him approach the crowd on the stoop.

“Cole!” Leigh cried. “Can you believe this awful mess?”

Pippa nearly collapsed.
Cole from Phoenix!

Cole presumed the babe in the iridescent pantaloons had just delivered a singing telegram to Titian, the dog. She was blushing in mortification: couldn't blame her. Then he stopped dead: despite the false mustache he recognized her mouth. It had been haunting him for weeks.
Chippa?
What was she doing here in that strange getup, pretending he was invisible? Either she didn't remember him or she didn't care to remember him: neither theory was complimentary. Cole decided to play dumb until he got his bearings. “I see the Poussin has arrived,” he told Leigh.

“They can't bring it in or Samson will have to shoot them,” she answered. “We've been standing here for half an hour.”

The head guard snapped his phone shut. “Okay. We got a deal.” He put his revolver on the doormat. “I leave my heat here and carry the picture inside. My three guys guard me. Your bodyguard guards the picture. If it looks as if I'm going to take off with it, everybody shoots me.”

“That seems fair,” Leigh agreed.

“Not so fast.” Samson wouldn't let him in until he had run the scenario past his boss in Tucson. He frisked the guard. Then he cocked his gun and aimed it at the guard's chest. “Nice and easy. One false move and you're hamburger.”

That got the other Brinks men so annoyed that two of them trained their guns at Samson's chest. “And you're chowchow,” one of them replied.

“Let's try not to shoot a dozen holes in the painting, okay, fellas?” Cole said.

The guard with the crate tiptoed gingerly over the threshold. He had no doubt that should he somehow trip or hiccup, Samson would blast him. “Where would you like me to put this?”

“Right there against the umbrella stand. Thank you.” Leigh signed a dozen receipts.

Snap out of it. He doesn't recognize you.
Pippa was both relieved and a little hurt. She peeled four hundreds off a wad in her pocket. “Thanks for your patience, gentlemen. Excellent job.”

“You're welcome.” The guard glared at Samson. “You're not, asshole.” They drove away.

“Nothing like a little shootout to get the day off to a good start. And you would be . . . ?” Cole asked Pippa when she made no sign of leaving.

“Cosmo du Piche,” Leigh announced. “Our new majordomo.”

“Cole Madisson. Nice touch, that tip.” Picking up the crate, he walked down the hall.

Leigh's phone rang. It was her art dealer again. She had caused him to lose face with Sotheby's. If some cowboy was going to pull a gun every time he tried to deliver a French masterpiece to the Wild West, the Bowes family would be removed from his client list. “I told you I'm sorry,” Leigh snapped, hanging up. She rubbed her flaming forehead. “Cosmo, can you do martial arts?”

“I can karate kick.”

“That's good enough for me.” Leigh turned to Samson. “You're fired. Wait here, Cosmo.” Leigh accompanied Samson to his room. Five minutes later, his bags packed, they returned to the foyer.

“Good luck, fruitcake,” he told Pippa on the way out.

When nothing remained of Samson but the dust cloud in her driveway, Leigh turned to Pippa. “I feel
so
much better already. Would you like a tour of the house?”

Having driven all night from Aspen, Pippa would have preferred a ten-hour siesta but, rather than get fired on the spot like Samson, said, “I would love that, Signora Bowes.”

“We'll start right here with the front doors. I saw you admiring them. Aren't they fantastic?”

The Varathane had barely dried on two enormous rosewood doors. On the left door, beneath the inscription
CASA,
the figure of a woman in evening dress had been carved in bas relief. She bore an idealized resemblance to Leigh. On the right door, beneath the inscription
BOWES,
was the figure of a man in a tux, presumably the guy who had paid for everything. Twittering birds adorned the four corners of each door.

“I love the birds,” Pippa said.

“My husband insisted on them. His company is the largest importer of feathers in the United States.” That explained the paintings. “Bravo.”

“Fine Feather is also
the
purveyor of sequins, metallic fabric, whalebone, rhinestones, faux fur, and snakeskin in Las Vegas.” Shutting the front doors, Leigh proceeded to a palatial room off the foyer. “I'm a bit of a Louis Quatorze nut. Casa Bowes is a thirty-thousand-square-foot replica of Versailles.” Seeing Pippa's glazed smile, Leigh continued, “You're probably wondering why it isn't named
Maison
Bowes, aren't you?”

Actually Pippa was wondering if there were a death penalty in Nevada and, if so, when Leigh's interior decorator had been executed. “Yes, that did cross my mind.”

“We didn't want to seem too pretentious.”

“It's perfect.” Pippa kept the smile glued on as Leigh showed her a Duesenberg, custom-painted apricot, parked in the garage: her toodling-around-town wheels. Pippa was led past six ballrooms, a coffin-sized silver chest, an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, and a cavernous library crammed with stuffed birds.

“My husband is an expert orthodontist, as you might imply.”

Pippa didn't dare tell her new employer the correct words were “ornithologist” and “infer.” “This is very impressive, Signora Bowes.”

In the supermodern kitchen they ran into Rudi, a sixtyish chef in a white toque busy baking hundreds of tiny pie shells for tomorrow's birthday party. “Rudi's grandfather was pastry chef for Emperor Franz Jonah.”

“Josef,
Dummkopf,
” Rudi shouted.

Leigh ignored him. “And this is our dear Kerry, in charge of laundry, linen, silver, and porcelain.”

A blowsy, none too carefully washed young woman sat at the stainless-steel counter affixing white bows to a mountain of liver biscuits that Rudi had baked yesterday. “Who the hell are you?” she asked Pippa.

“Cosmo du Piche.” There was no way to say that with a shred of dignity.