School of Fortune (40 page)

“I should. She's my mother.”

To her surprise, he quietly said, “Thank you for telling me.”

“Bing Bing could have come over disguised as a harlequin.”

“Unlikely, as she's under round the clock surveillance.”

“Maybe Moss fell off the ladder.” That didn't have much gravity. “What did your girlfriend take out of his sock?”

“A memory card that will put him away for a long time. What did
you
remove from beneath your mother's skirt?”

He saw that? Good eyes. “Her gun.”

“That was risky, Cosmo.” Insanely so. “Where is it?”

“In my pocket.”

Cole confiscated it. “Your mother's a consummate actress. She had me convinced she had never seen you before.”

Pippa's face felt hot as lava. “She really doesn't know I'm me. I look a lot different than the last time we met.”

“What's this about a disowned daughter? Your sister? She sounds awful.”

“She's had a streak of bad luck,” was all Pippa would say. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to bail Thayne out of jail.”

“You can't leave now. We've got a party to wrap. Nothing's going to happen to your mother for the next few hours.” Something might happen to Cosmo, though; those gray socks paired with her mother's pointy satin shoes were driving him mad with lust.

They went back to the ballrooms, where Masqueradia Dusiana was raging at force five. Leigh, her therapist, and her missing bichon frise Titian blew in around three in the morning. All things considered, she looked radiant. “There you are, Cosmo! Dr. Zeppelin and I just got back from Bing Bing's. He thought we should meet face-to-face and he was absolutely right. Can you believe that bastard gave my dog to his
mistress?”

“Just for the week,” Dr. Zeppelin said. “Still inexcusable.”

Leigh nuzzled her pet's neck. “We had a cathartic session. The FBI just arrested her. Serves her right for trying to dress me in double-variegated cockatoo feathers.”

Pippa frowned at Dr. Zeppelin, who seemed proud of his day's work. “Shouldn't you be with your husband in the emergency room, signora?”

“Surely you jest. Where's Dusi? I want to throw a persimmon at her. Dr. Z and I are getting rid of all my oppressors tonight.”

“She's gone home for the evening. All that dancing exhausted her.”

Cole's phone rang as Leigh and her emancipator wandered off. “That was Agent Ballard,” he said, hanging up. “She just arrested Moss when he woke up.”

“Is she your partner?”

“She's my boss. We've been on the case for six months.” Was that a gleam of jealousy in her eye? Hallelujah! “If you mean romantic partner, no. No one is.”
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Cosmo.

A tsunamic blush rolled from Pippa's head to her feet. Not the girlfriend not not not: her heart had just been let out of a cage and soared far above Casa Bowes. In a daze, Pippa bid departing guests adieu. Few asked and no one seemed the least perturbed not to see Moss and/or Leigh on the way out. Cole visited the Bolivian rosewood doors every hour or so to check that Pippa's feet were still on the ground. By sunup only a few vintage cars remained in the driveway. Loath to leave while Rudi was still cranking out food, the Stoutmeyers had started a bridge tournament in the first ballroom. A few drunks slumbered in the gondolas. An accordion octet sat in their underwear in the Jacuzzi.

Leigh found Pippa at the front door. “That was a great party, Cosmo. You are the best.”

Pippa accepted a loving hug. “I'm sure Madam Damon will call with a wonderful announcement any moment now.”

“She can take her country club and stuff it. I'm divorcing Moss and going back to the chorus line. That's where I was always happiest.”

As they were waving goodbye to a few bedraggled guests, Kerry appeared on the porch with Dusi's ladle. “What do we do with this ugly thing?”

“Give that to me.”

Cole caught up with Pippa as she was backing the Maserati out of the garage. “Going somewhere?”

“I'm returning Dusi's ladle. Then I'm getting my mother out of jail.”

“Mind if I come along? We just discovered that Moss wired sixty thousand bucks to Harlan's account. I've got a few questions for him.”

They drove a while in silence. Cole found himself staring at Pippa's jacket. Two healthy breasts lurked under that gray serge, yearning to be freed. And her thighs . . . each time she depressed the clutch, her long, smooth muscles rippled beneath her silk shorts. Tossing those eyeglasses out the window would be the crowning achievement of his life. She would look fantastic with mascara and gray eye shadow. Lipstick! He nearly groaned.

Pippa looked sweetly over. “I couldn't have done it without you, Cole.”

“Loved every minute.” He noticed the huge ladle on the floor. “Dusi's?”

“Yes. It's Edwardian silver. Weighs a ton.”

A zillion-volt current crackled across the bucket seats as they both had the same thought: had Dusi's ladle dented Moss's skull? “I don't believe it,” Pippa said. “Why?”

“Let's find out.”
Fast. I wouldn't want to lose Harlan.
To his delight, Pippa read his mind. She was also a natural fast driver: Cole thought he had just died and gone to heaven.

A red Mustang shot past them on Dusi's moat. Their rearview mirrors kissed on the narrow drawbridge. “That car nearly hit us the other day,” Pippa said. “Horatio!” Dusi's majordomo, his old eyes crusted with sleep, was still standing on the stoop. “Who was that?”

“Harlan, sir. He and Madam are going to the airport. They will be visiting Algeria for a few months.”

“Which airport?” There were three possibilities.

“The one where her plane is, naturally.”

“Thank you.” Pippa shut her window. “What's the closest airport?” “North Vegas.”

She blasted north. “Call Leigh for me.” Cole held the phone to her ear. “To which airport did you deliver Madam Damon's eyelashes a while back? Thank you.”

Pippa yanked on the emergency brake and executed a textbook J-turn. “Driving school,” she offered by way of explanation. The Maserati's speedometer climbed to ninety. “We guessed wrong. They're leaving from Henderson.” She chuckled at the name. “Should have known.”

Fortunately, traffic was light; unfortunately, Harlan hadn't observed any speed limits, either: Pippa and Cole arrived at the small executive airport well after his red Mustang. “FBI,” Cole shouted, flashing his badge as he and Pippa tore to the runway. “Nothing takes off. Tell the pilot to stay in the cockpit.”

They bolted up the stairway into Dusi's Learjet seconds before the steward closed the door. He was summarily evicted. Inside the cabin, Dusi sat at a table smoking one of her long
femme fatale
cigarettes, sipping a martini as she held her lighter beneath a sheet of paper that wouldn't ignite. Thayne's black-hooded red siskin perched in her safari hat. Beer in hand, Harlan was studying a coat of armor wired to the back wall. Both of them had changed from Masqueradia Dusiana duds into Patagonia khakis.

Dusi dropped her lighter in surprise. “Perfect timing, Cosmo!” She ogled Cole head to foot. “And I get Moss's valet in the bargain? That's very generous of you.”

“We're not reporting for work,” Pippa said. “We need to ask Harlan a few questions.”

“Tell us about the sixty grand Moss Bowes deposited to your account,” Cole said.

In reply Harlan yanked the spear away from the coat of armor, taking down half the rear wall. “Harlan!” Dusi screamed as a codpiece skittered across her table. “You've just destroyed the armor Sir Gilbert Umfraville wore to Agincourt!”

“Leave me alone,” he growled, brandishing the spear. “I didn't do nothing.”

“Then put the spear down.” Cole removed Thayne's pistol from his vest. “Or I might have to shoot you.”

“Stop! I will not have my servants behaving like the IRA! Put that spear down, you meathead. You, drop that gun in here.” Dusi removed the lid from her martini shaker. “Now.” Cole dropped the pistol into the gin. Dusi glared at Harlan until he reluctantly set down his spear. “Sixty thousand! I don't pay you enough for services rendered?” “Moss needed personal information.”

Dusi clapped her hands over her face. “He paid you
sixty thousand dollars
to learn what I like in bed?”

“Actually, he wanted to know what was going on at the membership meetings.”

The cigarette holder dropped from Dusi's mouth into her cleavage.
“You
gave him those photocopies?” “Sixty grand is a lot of dough.”

“How dare you! We all took a blood oath of confidentiality.”

“What could possibly be so bad, Madam Damon?” Pippa said. “If I understand correctly, you did nothing at those meetings but read blackball letters.”

Dusi slowly regained her color. “I suppose you're right, Cosmo. As always.” She took a belt of her martini. “Moss was looking for dirt in the wrong place.”

Seeing Dusi's eyes flit to the papers on the table, Pippa managed to grab a wad of them a split second before Dusi could. They were all damp and smelled of chlorine. Pippa read the first page. “‘I object to the membership of Gina Crane. She intends to homeschool her children instead of sending them to a reputable institution such as Choate.'“ She read the second page. “‘I object to the membership of Vivianne Cross. She has just sold her Matisse to a citizen of Egypt. Her patriotism is highly questionable.'“ All of the pages contained similar messages. “Why were you trying to burn these, Madam Damon?”

“That's part of my job.” Without skipping a beat, Dusi reached into her pocketbook and scribbled out a check. “Cosmo, here's a little something for your trouble. Thank you for bringing Harlan's reprehensible behavior to my attention.”

Pippa stared at the check for five hundred thousand dollars. Those odd squished
m's
. . . those crooked t's and oversized
d's
. . . suddenly she was back in matchmaking school listening to Marla Marble analyze her students' handwriting. Pippa took another look at the letters to the membership committee.

“What's the matter?” Dusi snapped. “Not enough money?”

“I believe you wrote all these letters.” Why were they so wet?
Aha!
“They got soaked when you fell into signora's pool.”

“After you took them from Moss's
scriban,”
Cole chimed in.

Another zillion-watt lightbulb went off in Pippa's head. “And you tried to silence Signor Bowes when he confronted you.”

“Cosmo, you're hallucinating. I was with Harlan every minute last night.”

“Every minute,” Meathead confirmed, slightly too enthusiastically.

Pippa took a wild stab in the dark:
Hang on, Mama.
She reached in her pocket and dropped a man's orange thong on the table. “Then I suppose that would be yours, Harlan.” Pippa dropped the tacky red nylon panties on top of them. “And these would be yours, Madam Damon. Size nine.”

Dusi nearly gagged. Size nine!
Nylon!
Words escaped her as she tried to figure out what Harlan's monogrammed thong was doing with that red abomination. She soon reached the only conclusion possible. “After all I've done for you,” she spat. Dusi removed the gun she kept under the table in case a terrorist tried to fly her Learjet into the Empire State Building.

She aimed for Harlan's heart but only clipped him in the shoulder. Dusi's second bullet was more successful, ricocheting off Sir Gilbert Humfraville's helmet into Harlan's gluteus maximus. “Get off my plane!” she screamed.

Howling, Harlan staggered out, leaving an impressive trail of blood.

“You.” Dusi pointed the gun at Cole. “Leave.”

He didn't budge. “Do as she says,” Pippa said.

“I'm not leaving you here, Cosmo.”

“Madam Damon and I have business to discuss. I'll be fine.” Cole left, with a door slam that shook a couple more pieces of armor off the wall. Pippa settled into the leather seat opposite Dusi's. Her fingertips tingled as she ratcheted into Walker survival mode. “There's one thing I don't understand. Why did you let Peggy Stoutmeyer into the club?”

Dusi realized that denying her guilt, at least to Cosmo, was futile. “I wasn't about to let a rich, attractive woman into the club to take croquet lessons with Harlan. As you can see, he's a bit of a tomcat.”

She emptied her glass. “God! I'm so glad you're working for me now, Cosmo. If I drink one more warm martini, I'll lose my mind.”

Pippa eyed the bird in Dusi's hat. “You treated Madam Walker very badly.”

“She'll live! A top-notch defense should get her off with a few thousand hours of community service.”

“But you were the one who smacked Signor Bowes with the ladle. Madam Walker didn't do anything but fall asleep.”

“Bad luck.” Dusi clicked her gold lighter a half-dozen times, to no effect. “Damn! I used up all the lighter fluid trying to burn those papers.”

“Allow me,” Pippa said, drawing the MatchMace from her pocket. “You must really quit smoking, Madam Damon.”

T
hayne awoke from a fitful dream with a cramp in her leg and a stitch in her neck. Her wig weighed a ton and her corsets were squeezing her blood blue. She sat in a jail cell with a pair of transvestites who had arrived minutes after she had last night. The two of them were still debating whether Thayne was a fellow transvestite, a well-preserved English actress from the sixties, or the mistress of a Russian Mafioso. Her gown and jewels were beyond magnificent but the nubucks confused them. Thayne hadn't helped matters by refusing to utter a word.

She was lost in thought, her mind full of surreal images: Moss on the floor, masked harlequins serving Champagne, a Kafkaesque legion of chauffeurs, green Dusi. Thayne could not fathom how she had ended up in jail. She remembered feeling sleepy. She remembered a little red bird. Mostly she remembered Cosmo.

As dawn tinted her skirt gold, Thayne thought about the young man who had literally read her mind. Had he not removed her pistol before she was dragged to the police station, God knows where she would have opened her eyes this morning. Dusi had said Cosmo was extraordinarily well informed, but knowing about a pistol in her garter? Then slipping it into his own pocket? Incredible.

Thayne thought back to the moment she first saw him. He had bowed to her. She had been less than courteous in return. Was it his uniform? Now that she was used to it, Thayne thought Cosmo's ensemble was uniquely beautiful. She couldn't imagine him in the black livery of an ordinary majordomo. She was even becoming fond of his eyeglasses and that anemic wisp of a mustache.

She cringed, remembering how she had ignored him, thinking he was merely a servant while she was Thayne the Magnificent from Dallas. Any other domestic would have responded to that treatment by spitting in her caviar. Cosmo had responded by defending her honor again and again while her supposed friends remained silent. Devotion of that magnitude reminded her of... she felt an ache in her heart... Pippa.

Cosmo did bear distinct similarities to her daughter. His voice. His slender body. When he blushed, he could be mistaken for Pippa's fraternal twin. Whenever he walked into a room, Thayne felt an elevation of pulse, of life force, that she had only ever felt with Pippa. Maybe the two of them had been born on the same day, at the same minute. Cosmic twins. Cosmic Cosmo: Thayne smiled with great melancholy. She was in love with him. It wasn't sexual. She just felt a massive longing to hear his voice every day, to have him in her house, fill that gouge in her chest. . . look, she was crying.

Cosmo was a very private fellow. Dusi hadn't been able to get one word out of Olivia Villarubia-Thistleberry concerning his origins. Thayne wondered where Cosmo was born. Europe? Northern Africa? Turkey? Where had he acquired his superb sense of style? What was his mother like? Thayne envied the woman, whoever she was: she had everything that Thayne did not, and she would have it forever. That was because Cosmo's mother would not peevishly disinherit her child for calling off a wedding. She would not go on a tirade across the continental United States because her child had taken a different path than the one she had imposed on him. Cosmo's mother was no doubt a wise woman; Thayne didn't deserve the title mother.

Had he really sent her that black-hooded red siskin? With the note about flying to her if he were a bird? Thayne smiled ruefully. Cosmo must have felt very sorry for her indeed.

Keys jangled in the iron door. Thayne was too depressed to even look up until she heard the voice that made her life worth living. “Good morning, Madam Walker.”

She bolted off the cot, then passed a hand over her face. “I must look a wreck.”

“We all look slightly below par, I'm afraid.” Cosmo wasn't kidding. The sleeve of his gray jacket was torn. Two buttons were missing. The valet Cole was equally disarranged. “I'm sorry we couldn't get here sooner.”

“I will pay back every cent of bail. At once.” “There is no bail. You're free to go home.”

“My God!” Thayne clasped her beloved in a long embrace. “You've single-handedly saved my life.”

Pippa smiled at Cole. “Not entirely.”

They brought Thayne up to date on events at Casa Bowes. When the saga ended with Dusi being led away from her Learjet in handcuffs, Thayne could only shake her head. “I'm not surprised. That woman always considered herself above the law. I used to be that way myself.”

After an awkward silence Pippa asked, “Will you return to Dallas now, madam?”

Maybe it was her lack of sleep, maybe it was the early sun on Cosmo's cheek: Thayne was stunned to hear a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette blurt, “You will think this very odd, Cosmo, but I'd like to visit your mother and personally thank her for bringing you into the world.” Such a deep silence ensued that Thayne feared the worst. “I'm sorry. Is she living?”

Cosmo blushed violently. “Yes, madam, she is.”

“Too bad,” Thayne sighed. “I had hoped to adopt you.”

Pippa looked imploringly at Cole. “Trust me, Cosmo,” he whispered. “Close your eyes.”

She slowly lowered her lids. She felt her eyeglasses being lifted off. Then she felt Cole kissing her cheek. His mouth proceeded south, stopping at the end of her mustache. She felt him grab one end of it
in his teeth
and tug. Then Pippa felt a breeze on her upper lip. Cole kissed her. She really kissed him back.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said, stepping away.

Thayne gasped. Of all events over the last two days, this was by far the most surreal. “Pippa?”

Her daughter smiled and bowed. “At your service, madam.”

They hugged and cried and laughed like two paupers who had just won the lottery. Eventually Thayne became aware of the handsome valet who had rather seriously kissed her daughter. “I'm sorry. You said your name was Cole?”

“Madisson. From Pittsburgh.”

“My God! You used to work for the Pittsburgh Madissons?” “I
am
one of the Pittsburgh Madissons.”

Thayne thought she might faint: the Madisson steel fortune was ten times larger than Rosimund Henderson's paltry petrodollars. “And all this time you've been pretending to be a valet?”

He winked at Pippa. “Great minds think alike.”

Pippa tried to look displeased. “How long have you known?”

“From the moment I saw you.” He took her hand. “Forgive me?”

Another kiss.

“Let's leave this awful place,” Thayne said. “Take good care of this,” she called, tossing her wig to the transvestites. “It belonged to Princess Belgioioso.”