Slay Belles

SLAY BELLES

A BLACKBIRD SISTERS MYSTERY

NANCY MARTIN

N
EW
A
MERICAN
L
IBRARY

Published by New American Library, a division of

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Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in
Drop-Dead Blonde
.

First E-Book Printing, July 2012

Copyright ©Nancy Martin, 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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ISBN: 978-1-101-56355-7

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

Chapter 1

In the hope of starting a Christmas tradition that didn’t end with throwing food at a sibling, I took my niece Lucy to visit Santa at Haymaker’s department store. Afterward, we snagged the best table in the Mrs. Claus Tearoom on the mezzanine, where Lucy licked the sprinkles off half a dozen cookies and told me family secrets while we waited for her mother.

“Mummy says she has too much juice in her caboose right now, Aunt Nora, and she can’t face Christmas,” Lucy volunteered. “So she’s getting a massage every afternoon from Jason and yelling about electrolysis and her chin. What’s electrolysis?”

After I told her, I asked, “What kind of massage does Jason give, exactly, Luce?”

My niece was saved from ratting out her mother when Libby arrived. “Hello, darlings!”

My sister swept up like a zaftig Italian film star with her whoosh of auburn hair and a red sweater so revealing that three of Santa’s teenage elves nearly suffered whiplash as she sailed by. She carried enough shopping bags to cripple a Nazareth donkey, and dropped the loot on an empty chair with triumph. “What a night!”

“Mummy,” Lucy said with a Machiavellian gleam in her eyes, “Santa didn’t ask if I was good this year.”

I said, “We were very relieved. Waiting in line was beginning to feel like a perp walk.”

“What about you?” Libby skewered me with a look as she sat down. “Have you been naughty or nice lately?”

“Santa didn’t ask me.”

“You hardly look angelic,” Libby observed. “In fact, you have a distinctly postcoital glow. Have you been seeing the gangster again?”

“He isn’t—”

“Because I just bumped into Alan Rutledge at the top of the escalator. And he’s looking adorable these days.”

“Does owning a department store make a man adorable?”

“It helps.” Libby fluffed her hair and adjusted her décolletage. “He isn’t bad to look at, really. Rather like a teddy bear—cute ears and that little tummy, of course. And he always smells divine.”

My sister had been widowed twice and still enjoyed men of all shapes, sizes, and proclivities. With her uncanny radar for available partners, I firmly believed she could find an eligible man if she were cast adrift in the Amazon River. I said, “You got close enough to smell him?”

“It was a friendly holiday greeting, that’s all.” She took out her compact and checked her lipstick for damage. “I’m not interested in him in the least, despite all his money. I need someone with more fire. But you’ve been a widow for two years now, and Alan might be exactly the person to bring you to your senses.”

“Too late,” I said.

She forgot about her lipstick. “Oh, dear heaven, you haven’t eloped, have you?”

“No. Alan’s engaged.”

“How disappointing! Not to Bitty Markham, I hope. Ever since her poor Stanley’s little financial mix-up, she’s been looking for another meal ticket.”

“Poor Stanley bilked his best friends, Libby, and it’s formally called investment fraud, which is why he’s in jail. No, Alan is engaged to Cindie Rae Smith.”

“You’re kidding!” My sister dropped her compact and stared at me with round eyes. “Cindie Rae? The
Penthouse
girl with the X-rated Web site?”

Lucy looked up from her cookies. “Mummy, what’s a
Penthouse
girl?”

“A woman who lives in an apartment, darling.” While her daughter frowned, Libby said to me, “That gold digger finally hit her jackpot, huh?”

“I guess her Web site isn’t as lucrative as she hoped.”

“Taking requests from perverts on a live camera?” Libby cried. “How can that not make scads of money? She’ll perform anything with that hilarious fluorescent dildo she’s got for sale.”

“Mummy, what’s—”

“An extinct bird, sweetheart. Would you like some hot chocolate? With marshmallows?”

While Lucy scrambled off to order a diversionary drink, I sat back in my chair to better gauge the seriousness of my sister’s pre-Christmas hysteria. Although the wills of her late husbands left Libby financially capable of rearing her children, she didn’t have enough extra cash for a Christmas blowout. And the flash in her eye looked more manic than simple holiday high spirits. I wondered what crisis might be brewing.

But I said, “You seem to have a thorough knowledge of Cindie Rae’s Web site, Libby.”

“I feel it’s important to keep my computer skills up-to-date. Haven’t you peeked? Honestly, Nora, she’s utterly icky. No romance, no mystery. It’s just plumbing, and not very nice plumbing at that. What would Alan’s parents say if they were still alive?”

“Maybe they’d say it’s about time Alan did something with his life besides go to matinees.”

Libby sat up straighter, aquiver with indignation. “You mean a job? Why should a man with his resources have to work for a living?”

“Because sloth is a deadly sin that kills the soul?”

“Oh, you’re just sorry that we lost our own fortune, aren’t you?” She patted my hand. “It’s natural to grieve. Admit it, Nora, you thoroughly enjoyed the life of leisure before Mama and Daddy left. The hardest work you ever did was decorating the charity balls.”

Ever since our parents absconded from Philadelphia to sail off for South America with our trust funds tucked in their matching Louis Vuitton luggage, my sisters and I had struggled to make ends meet. I’d found employment as the lowly assistant to a newspaper society columnist, while our younger sister, Emma, tried to make a career out of training show jumpers for the Grand Prix circuit. Libby, however, had bounced from one scam to another in the pursuit of a line of work that could simultaneously support five kids and unleash her spiritual and sensual potential. Most of the time, I just hoped she wasn’t going to get herself arrested by the vice squad.

With a smile, I said, “A job isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to me.”

“Well, Alan should be allowed to enjoy his money and leisure time while he’s got them. You should have moved in on him, Nora. If you keep seeing the Mafia prince, you’ll end up like Bitty Markham—languishing at home with no sex life while your man sits in jail.”

“Libby, Michael is not involved in his father’s business.”

“That’s what they want you to think, isn’t it? Nora,” she said with a perfectly straight face, “it’s possible for a vulnerable woman to be blinded by great sex. Personally, I’ve always been able to prioritize even in the arms of an excitingly primitive lover, but you’re venturing into a new phase of your life that could be very—”

Lucy saved me from the same lecture that had been driving me crazy for months. She returned to the table with her lower lip pouting. “They aren’t making any more hot chocolate, Mummy. They say the store closes in ten minutes.”

My sister reacted as if she’d been jabbed with a cattle prod. “Oh, heavens, and I haven’t found anything to wear to this weekend’s reawakening!” She jumped to her feet and grabbed Lucy’s velvet coat. “I’ve got to find the plus-size department immediately. Why do these stores always hide the large sizes? Do they think size sixteen is contagious?”

While Libby gathered up her shopping bags, I helped Lucy fasten the toggles on her coat. “ ’Bye, Luce. Thanks for coming with me.”

“ ’Bye, Aunt Nora!” She gave me a sprinkle-encrusted kiss. “You’re coming to my school play, right? On Friday. I play the Third Pickpocket.”

“Typecasting,” said Libby. “I’m in charge of the PTA refreshment table. We’re doing Christmas cookies and raffling off a day-spa treatment with the delicious new man at Jason’s.”

“I’ll be there,” I promised.

Holding hands, Libby and Lucy set off through the crowd like mother and daughter killer whales cleaving the rough waters of the North Atlantic.

“Who the heck is Jason?” I asked their departing figures. “And what on earth is a reawakening?”

I pulled myself together with the firm admonishment that I didn’t want to know.

Putting my loopy sister out of my mind for the time being, I gathered up my handbag and stepped around Santa’s workshop—still teeming with the last few howling children and camcorder-carrying parents of the night. The frazzled elves hurried their final customers out, and I was willing to bet that Santa would sell his soul for a boilermaker. Only the animated reindeer looked tireless as they blinked and nodded in their white plastic wonderland.

With Bing Crosby’s croon fading behind me, I headed on my way, passing first into Haymaker’s luxury bedding department. Immediately, a display bed blocked my path, and I slowed my pace to admire it. Heaped with red satin cushions, the sensuously plush mattress was covered with a polar bear faux fur and draped with a gauzy white curtain—a perfect spot for Mrs. Claus to await Santa’s return from his rounds.

But standing beside the bed was no long-neglected wife hoping to make a little Christmas merriment with her overworked husband.

“Alan?”

Alan Rutledge lingered at the marble mezzanine railing in exactly the same spot his father had stood at closing time every evening, and his grandfather, too. The diminutive owner of Haymaker’s smiled down upon his domain like a kid who couldn’t tear himself away from the final innings of a baseball game. He obviously didn’t see hundreds of crabby customers slapping down their credit cards one more time before rushing off into the night. A much more serene fantasy transfixed him.

I almost hated to disturb his pleasure, but I touched his arm and tried again. “Alan?”

He shook himself as if from a trance and turned to me with a sweet-natured smile. The corona of his strawberry-blond hair glowed like a halo behind his receding hairline and caused his round ears to stand out from the sides of his head exactly like a teddy bear’s.

“Nora Blackbird!” he said. “How nice to see you.”

I bent down so he could give me a kiss on the cheek and noticed that Alan did indeed smell divine. I wondered if he hadn’t been spritzed as he wandered through the men’s cologne department. He often ambled daydreamily around Haymaker’s as if lost in a paradise. Vigilant store employees sometimes managed to spiff him up as he floated by. Tonight he wore a perfectly tailored suit that screamed Brioni and disguised his rotund shape. Handsome Italian shoes must have been slipped on his feet by an alert clerk when he wasn’t looking.

“Happy holidays, Alan.”

“Don’t you look fetching.” He held my hand and gave me an appreciative once-over. “The working life must agree with you.”

“Why, thank you, Alan. I understand congratulations are in order? I hear you’re getting married.”

For a man of thirty-odd years, he could still blush like a teenager. “Yes, I am. Have you met Cindie Rae? She’s a lovely girl.”

“She’s beautiful.” Floundering for something genteel to say about a woman who had exposed every portion of her body—and a few portions of its interior, also—to anyone willing to plunk down a few dollars to buy a magazine or sign on to her Web site, I said ineptly, “I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

“We’re very well suited,” Alan said. “She’s so full of energy.”

Well,
energy
was one euphemism, I supposed. I noticed he carried his own coat as well as a voluptuous fur over his arm. “Are you on your way out this evening?”

“Yes, Cindie Rae and I are going to the theater tonight.”

I checked my watch. “Oh, dear, you’ve missed the curtain!”

The news didn’t spoil his amiable mood. “I suppose we have.” He gave a little shrug. “We’ll catch the second act.”

“How disappointing!”

“Not really.” With a shy smile, he admitted, “We saw the show last night, and the night before, too.”

“My goodness. Cindie Rae must share your enthusiasm for theater.”

“Well, I hope she’ll learn to enjoy it as much as I do.” Alan’s face glowed with a rhapsodic bliss. “There’s nothing like a great play. I’m lucky she puts up with my obsession.”

A more cynical man might think his future wife “put up with him” because he was worth millions and had access to the world’s most luxurious goods at wholesale prices. But Alan seemed flattered to have a fiancée who made him miss the overture.

He focused on me again. “Are you doing some Christmas shopping tonight, Nora?”

“I’m going to a party shortly, but first I must pick up a package for a friend. From Popo Prentiss.”

Alan’s sweet smile faltered only for an instant. “Popo never stops working, does she?”

“She must be a great asset to the store.”

“Oh, yes.”

With a nearly invisible frown, Alan considered his premier personal shopper—the sales associate who pampered high-end customers into spending astronomical amounts of money in Haymaker’s store. Everyone from blue-blooded heiresses and the trophy wives of the nouveau riche, to time-strapped executives or discerning consumers of high-priced goods—they all used Popo. She dashed around the store to personally select merchandise that best suited her demanding clients. With her innate sense of style and ability to predict trends, Popo helped even the most hopeless cases build fashionable wardrobes and enviable lifestyles. Many former fashion failures could attribute their best-dressed status to Popo’s skill and energy.

Alan gave a quick head shake to resummon his good cheer. “Popo is remarkable. I hope we never lose her.”

I said, “I’m sure Popo stops working when the store closes, so I’d better dash. Enjoy your show, Alan.”

“It’ll be wonderful,” he assured me, brightening again at the prospect of his evening entertainment.

I couldn’t stop myself from giving Alan a farewell kiss on the cheek, and he went down the escalator, smiling with anticipation.

Although a grown man had a right to marry anyone he chose, I couldn’t imagine shy, low-profile, and culturally sophisticated Alan Rutledge mixed up with a woman of Cindie Rae Smith’s very public persona. Her exploits had been splashed all over the local newspapers and magazines to the extent that any living adult would have to be a hermit to not know who she was. Her Web site had triggered an uproar that still—six months after its opening day—raged around the city.

Alan hardly seemed the type to have a liaison with such an astonishingly different person.

But lately people had begun saying the same about me.

Mulling over the oddities of human attraction, I threaded my way through the luxury bedding department. I got halfway into Gucci goods before I managed to bump into Popo Prentiss herself.