Little Black Book of Murder (5 page)

Trying to remain calm, I said lightly, “If you're here to frighten your ex-­husband, let me get out of the way first, will you?”

She laughed in a hard voice. “Don't worry. My marksmanship is pretty good.”

Trying to maintain a cheery expression, I said, “Are you going to make a scene?”

“Stick around and watch.”

With that, she spun ­toward her husband, who was warily pushing through the crowd to reach his ex-­wife.

Marybeth exploded. “You son of a bitch!” Her voice carried over the heads of a hundred people. “Do you really think I'm going to let you get away with this?”

“Please, Marybeth, let's be reasonable—”

“Reasonable? You're stealing decades of my family's hard work. I want what's mine! Where's the pig?”

“Darling—”

“Still walking funny, Swain?” she asked nastily. “Let's see if I can make it even funnier.”

Marybeth shouldered the musket. The crowd around us gasped. But nobody ran, nobody screamed. Everyone fell silent—­frightened, yes, but also full of horrified anticipation.

Over the resulting quiet, Marybeth shouted, “My grandfather bred that boar through years and years of careful planning. And I've spent a decade refining the breed. If you think you can snatch him from us just as you walk away from thirty-­five years of marriage, you weren't paying attention, you asshole. Where is he? Where's our pig?”

Swain tried to sound placating. “He went missing. You know that.”

“Bullshit! You're hiding him!”

He put his hands out as if to stop Marybeth from firing the weapon. “I've told you over and over—”

“Pigs just don't fall off trucks and disappear,” Marybeth snapped from behind the musket. “You're hiding a valuable animal so you can cash in on my family one more time.”

A tiny noise came from behind me. I sneaked a cautious glance over my shoulder in time to see Zephyr come out of the barn with a single, somewhat gnarled tomato cradled in her hand. Looking like a tall, graceful angel in the sunlight, she drew every eye.

Marybeth's face turned scarlet, and her thinly controlled composure cracked. She swung the weapon away from Swain and took aim past my shoulder at Zephyr.

The whole crowd recognized her change of heart. Everyone surged away, shrieking in panic. Some threw themselves to the ground—others bolted for the parked cars. Swain Starr shouted.

Marybeth pulled the trigger.

But in the split second before the gun went off, Gus Hardwicke made a flying leap out of the crowd. He knocked the musket from her hands and tackled her to the ground.

I felt something deadly whistle past my ear and go harmlessly across the pasture.

Damn, I thought.

Now I owed my life to Gus Hardwicke.

N
obody was hurt. The family shooed us away. The guests obediently headed for their cars, all sorry the party had ended on such a sour note, yet giddy they'd witnessed what could have become a newsworthy incident.

Except, Swain assured everyone, “There's no need to call the police. It was a misunderstanding. Nothing to worry about.”

Gus drove me home in his convertible. “I should have let that nutter shoot Zephyr. What a headline!”

“Marybeth is not crazy,” I said firmly. “She might have been angry, but she isn't crazy. She's an agricultural geneticist—­a very serious one.”

“We could have had a news event on our hands if I hadn't lost my head and wrestled her into the dirt.”

“Yes, it's too bad we lost out on a mass shooting.”

He laughed. “I'm having a bit of fun, and you know it. We were all lucky.”

I did my best to control my trembling hands. Maybe nobody had been hurt, but it had been a close call. Although it pained me to do it, I said, “Look, I appreciate what you did back there. It wasn't luck. If you hadn't stopped Marybeth, she might have missed her target and hit me instead.”

Gus threw me a grin. “Did I save your pretty neck, Nora?”

“Yes, I think you did. And I—­well, thank you.”

He laughed. “I was hoping to see an old-­fashioned American-­girl fight between Marybeth and Zephyr. Some hair pulling, at the very least. She'd been drinking, you know. I smelled it when we were rolling around in the dust together.”

“Marybeth does have a temper,” I said. I remembered how Gus had lingered on the ground with her—­and how her arms seemed to find purchase on parts of his body that would normally be off-­limits. Maybe her temper wasn't the only hot part of Mary­beth.

“And what did she say about Swain walking funny?” Gus asked.

“I don't know what she meant.”

“That story isn't over,” Gus predicted. “Starr might be starting a new life down on the farm, but he hasn't dealt with his first family properly yet, has he? What do you think? Money problems?”

“There's so much money in the family, it's hard to imagine they need to fight over it. The Rattigans have hot dog money. And Swain made his own fortune.”

“Something has them all stirred up,” Gus said with delight.

“You mean besides Swain dumping his supportive wife after four children? For one of the most beautiful women in the world?”

Gus groaned. “I'll be bored to death if this story ends up being about jealous wives.”

Me, too, I thought.

I watched the passing scenery, thinking about what we'd just witnessed. “Did you hear the other thing Marybeth said? I get the impression Swain and Marybeth's brother have gone into a partnership to raise some unusual variety of pig—­a pig that Marybeth bred. But something must have gone wrong.”

“Too bad she couldn't breed some of the pig out of her own son. What happened to Porky? He didn't stick around for the shooting.”

“Stop calling him Porky,” I said. The pig jokes were an easy habit to fall into where the Rattigans were concerned. I fervently hoped I didn't slip again and call Porter by his awful nickname to his face. To Gus, I said, “Marybeth said something about wanting the breeding stock back.”

“But the pig disappeared,” Gus said.

“That seems to be Swain's side of the story.”

“What do you think? Is he telling the truth?”

“Why would he lie?”

Gus had a rollicking laugh. “Do you always assume people tell the truth?”

I sent him a frown.

“Nothing insulting intended,” he assured me. “You'll have to see what you can find out, that's all. Not about pigs. Who cares about livestock? It's Zephyr who's going to be the marketable headline in all this, you'll see.”

I pointed out the turn, and Gus pulled into the lane of Blackbird Farm. The once-­austere house sat back a considerable distance from the road. If you drove past fast enough, you still got the impression of baronial splendor. But our private lane curved around the grove of oak trees in the front, following the line of the pasture fence, and brought guests around to the back of the house where the truth became clear. The broken windows of the solarium gave the impression of an old man who'd lost half his teeth, and the rest of the house looked like a ramshackle pile of fieldstone and slate.

Emma's herd of Shetland ponies chased us along the pasture fence, but I don't think they were enough of a distraction to hide the condition of my home.

A couple of cars were parked on the gravel driveway between the house and the barn. One of them was a jacked-­up muscle car with a pastel paint job—­a sure sign the infamous Michael Abruzzo was in residence. The other was a plain sedan.

Gus Hardwicke got out of his side of the convertible in time to be greeted by Ralphie, the pet pig that was supposed to be our Christmas dinner but had ended up becoming our guard dog instead. He refused to stay penned and happily roamed the farm at will. Michael had devoted a few weeks to teaching him the perimeter of the property, but Ralphie spent most of his time mooning around the back door, waiting for Michael to come out and play.

Gus said, “What is it with you Yanks and pigs?”

I said, “He's just a pet.”

“A cocker spaniel is a pet,” Gus said as Ralphie snuffled his legs. “Does he bite?”

I went over and scratched Ralphie's bristly back. He had gained another fifty pounds over the winter and now stood as tall as one of Emma's Shetland ponies. Lately I had begun to wonder if he had a hormone imbalance and might grow to the size of a hippopotamus. I said, “He won't bite. You just have to show him who's boss.”

“How?” For the first time, Gus looked as if his ever-­ready confidence was shaken. He backed up against his car.

For a moment, I almost liked Gus Hardwicke.

“Move over, Ralphie.” I gave the pig a shove, which had no effect. In fact, Ralphie crowded Gus against the car and determinedly rooted his snout into Gus's crotch.

Gus yelped and climbed like a crab onto the hood of his convertible.

Michael came out onto the back porch and let out a piercing whistle.

Ralphie quit bullying Gus and gave a happy snort before trotting ­toward the house. Michael had been eating an apple, and he tossed the remains of it to his pig. Ralphie caught it in the air and retreated to the shade of a tree to savor his treat. After maraschino cherries, he loved apples best.

I hadn't planned on inviting Gus to stay. But at Michael's appearance, his newsman's instincts kicked in, and he headed for the porch almost as fast as Ralphie had.

One of Michael's employees, a member of his ever-­changing posse, came out of the kitchen. He stepped off the porch, clutching a bloody towel to his face as if he'd been beaten with a baseball bat. He limped, too. Gus did a double take and probably assumed the worst.

When the battered wiseguy reached me in the driveway, I asked, “What happened?”

“We were trying to fix your furnace,” he said through swollen lips, adding some foul words that began with
f.
“A lever kicked back and hit me in the kisser. You should sell this heap, lady, before somebody gets killed from flushing a toilet!”

He climbed into his car and made a hasty exit.

Lately, Michael had been enlisting his mob hoodlums to help him with a few home repairs. So far, the results were mixed. Bracing myself to face one more household disaster, I headed for the porch.

Usually, Michael took pains to avoid meeting my friends. This time he hadn't performed his usual vanishing act. By the time I reached them, Michael was impassively shaking Gus's hand.

“G'day. Quite a place you've got here,” Gus was saying in a cheerful tone, pretending he hadn't just witnessed the swift retreat of a bloodied man. “I expect a long-­forgotten minor royal to lean out a window any minute. Do you have housemaids and a stuffy butler? Footmen to polish your shoes at night?”

“It's just us,” I said when Michael made no effort to respond. “The last butler packed up a century ago.”

“I can see why Swain Starr passed it up. You could use a handyman.”

Gus cast a glance ­toward the neglected barn, the overgrown orchard and my still-­unplanted vegetable garden. Then he stood back and let his gaze rove up the house, across the drooping gutters to the roof that sagged even lower than it had last fall. The chimneys had lost a few bricks over the winter. The fieldstone walls looked magnificent, though, and the old windows had the gentle ripple of very old glass. The place looked as if Ben Franklin might stroll out the door to fly his kite in the back pasture.

But instead of historical figures, it was Michael Abruzzo on the porch. Michael, the son of New Jersey's last remaining crime boss—­and a dangerous-­looking customer all on his own—­didn't quite fit the picture. No hayseed with a rake, he looked every inch a mobster's heir apparent. He was very tall—­six foot four—­and had a face that had endured more than a few prison-­yard brawls. His shoulders were powerful enough to suggest he'd emerged from those brawls the undisputed winner. His heavy-­lidded eyes gave the impression he didn't like strangers.

While Gus looked him over, Michael kept silent, his face a mask that usually intimidated lesser men.

I went up the steps and slipped my arm around him. “Hi.”

“Hey.” He accepted my kiss, conscious that Gus was watching us. “How'd it go?”

“It was interesting,” I said. “Anything new here?”

“Rawlins stopped by, looking for you.” Michael was fond of Libby's oldest son. If anything, his influence had helped ease Rawlins out of his teenage rebellion. I thought we were through that period, but I read something subtle in Michael's expression.

I said, “I saw him at the party. He was going to give me a lift home.”

“He said he looked for you before he left but figured you'd come home already. I told him you'd get a ride with somebody else.”

I had told Michael I'd find my way home without needing a taxi service. “Was Rawlins okay?”

“He had a new pal in the car. Funny-­looking kid wearing a stupid hat. Said his name was Porter something.”

“Porter Starr?” I was surprised. “That's Swain Starr's youngest son. I didn't realize he was Rawlins's friend.” I frowned. What was my nephew doing with Porky?

Michael shrugged. We'd discuss it later, in other words—­when we were alone.

But Gus had a big grin on his face, as if he had no intention of leaving. He said, “You missed some excitement. I saved your enchanting lady friend from certain death.”

Michael glanced sharply at me.

“It's true,” I admitted. “Marybeth Starr got a little excited. She was waving around a musket and it went off. Revolutionary era, I'd guess. I think her father was a collector. It looked authentic.”

“I don't care about the gun. What the hell was she doing shooting at you?”

“She wasn't aiming for me. She was—­well, it doesn't matter. It's over now, and nobody will press any charges, so—”

“These parties of yours are supposed to be high class.”

Gus tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. “The higher the class, the more exclusive the weaponry. That's my take on it, mate. Say, I love old houses. Mind if I come inside? Take a look around?”

Although Michael maintained his menacing silence that said a firm
no
, I could hardly refuse. If it hadn't been for Gus, I might have been in an ambulance right now.

I opened the door and Gus followed me through, saying gregariously, “So, are you two married, or what, precisely? I've heard the workplace gossip, and nobody is quite sure of the situation.”

“Is it anyone's business?” I asked. I pulled off my sweater and dropped it over a kitchen chair, then tried to tame my hair into something less windblown.

“Not in the least,” Gus replied cheerfully. “And I'm a vulgar sod to ask. But then, everybody knows vulgarity runs in my family. I'm just curious. No wedding rings, I see, although that diamond on your finger looks as if it belongs in Ripley's, Nora.”

“It's very pretty, isn't it?” I said.

I felt married to Michael—­that was the main thing. We had exchanged a quirky set of vows on a beach in front of my family, in a ceremony cribbed from one of my mother's dubiously mystical texts, and that was enough for me. Michael was still pushing for a trip to a church, just a quiet ceremony before God with his local priest officiating and a license from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But that seemed like overkill to me.

Besides, the women in my family were afflicted with the Blackbird curse. Our husbands tended to die and leave us widows. I hoped that if I didn't exactly marry Michael according to law, maybe he'd dodge the curse. Meanwhile, we had committed to each other until death did us part, and we'd both meant it. That was going to have to be enough for now.