The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) (37 page)

T
he
Metro Police homicide detective showed up at nine a.m. the following morning. Lane was coming downstairs when he heard the brass knocker, and when he didn’t see Mr. Harris butlering along to answer the banging echo, he did the duty himself.

“Detective Merrimack. What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Baldwine. Do you have a moment?”

Merrimack was in the same uniform he’d been wearing the other day: dark slacks, white polo with the police crest, professional smile in place. He’d had his hair trimmed even tighter, and the aftershave was nice. Not too much.

Lane stepped aside and indicated the way in. “I was getting coffee. You want to join me?”

“I’m working.”

“I thought that was an issue for alcohol, not caffeine?”

Smile. “Is there somewhere we can go?”

“Here is fine. Considering you’ve turned down the Starbucks Morning Blend in my kitchen. So what do you need? My sister, Gin, is not an early bird, so if you want to talk with her, you better come back after noontime.”

Merrimack
smiled. Again. “Actually, I was interested in your security cameras.” He nodded up at the discreet pods on the ceiling by the molding. “There are a lot of them around, aren’t there.”

“Yes, this is a big house.”

“And they’re both on the outside and the inside of your home, right?”

“Yes.” Lane put his hands in the pockets of his slacks so he didn’t worry the watch band of his Piaget. Or the collar of his button down. “Is there something specific you’re looking for?”

Duh.

“What happens with the footage? Where is it recorded and stored?”

“Are you asking if you can view it?”

“You know, I am.” Smile. “It would be helpful.”

When Lane didn’t immediately answer, the detective smiled some more. “Listen, Mr. Baldwine, I know you want to be helpful. You and your family have been very open during the course of this investigation, and my colleagues and I have appreciated it.”

Lane frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure where it’s kept.”

“How can that be? Don’t you live here?”

“And I don’t know how to get access to it.”

“Show me where the computers are and I’ll handle it.” There was another pause. “Mr. Baldwine? Is there a reason why you don’t want me to see the footage from your estate’s security cameras?”

“I need to talk to my lawyer first.”

“You’re not a suspect. You’re not even a person of interest, Mr. Baldwine. You were down at the police station when your father was killed.” Merrimack shrugged. “So you have nothing to hide.”

“I’ll get back to you.” Lane returned to the door and opened it wide. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go have breakfast.”

Merrimack took his sweet time walking over to the exit. “I’ll just go and get a warrant. I’ll still get access.”

“Then this doesn’t present you with a problem, does it.”

The detective stepped over the threshold. “Who are you protecting, Mr. Baldwine?”

Something
about the look in the man’s face suggested Merrimack knew exactly who Lane was worried about.

“Have a wonderful day,” Lane said as he shut Easterly’s door on that knowing smile.

A
s Gin inspected her throat in her dressing room’s mirror, she decided the bruises were faded enough such that, with a little make-up, no one was going to notice them.

“Marls.” She sat down in the padded chair she used when she was getting done up. “Where is Tammy? I’m waiting in here.”

Her suite of rooms was done in shades of white. White silk drapes hanging from white-sashed antique windows. White wall-to-wall carpet thick as frosting on a cupcake in the bedroom and white marble with gold veining in the bath. She had an all-white bed that was like sleeping on a cloud and this walk-in dressing/closet enclave was nothing but mirrors and more of that carpeting. Lighting was provided by crystal chandeliers and crystal sconces that dangled like Harry Winston earrings from key vantage points—but the fixtures were the new ones, not that old, distorted Baccarat stuff downstairs and elsewhere.

She had beyond had it with stodgy Orientals and oil paintings that were like dark stains on the walls.

“Marls!”

This dressing area was a connector between her bathing space and where her clothes hung, and she had long used it, even before the quarter-of-a-million-dollar overhaul, as her prep area. There was a professional hairdressers’ set-up for the cutting, coloring, and washing of her hair, a make-up station to rival the Chanel counter at Saks in Manhattan, and enough perfume bottles, lotions and potions to put
goop.com
in the shade.

There was even a long window overlooking the back gardens in case they wanted to see anything in natural light. Or look at some flowers. Whatever.

Tapping her manicured fingertips on the chrome arm, she twisted the
chair around with her bare foot. “Marls! We’re leaving in a half hour for the courthouse. Come on! Call her!”

“Yes, ma’am,” her maid flustered from the suite proper.

Tammy was
the
make-up artist in town, and she always booked Gin ahead of her other clients for several reasons: One, Gin tipped well; two, the woman got to say that she did Gin’s make-up; and three, Gin allowed Tammy to attend the parties at Easterly and elsewhere as if she were actually a guest.

While Gin waited, she inspected her make-up collection, the lot of it fanning out in a professionally mounted display, the complete compliment of MAC eye shadows and blushes a child’s playground of colorful trouble, the rolling tables of foundations, beauty treatments, and brushes looking like something you might need a PhD to operate. In front of her, a twin set of theater lights went down both sides of the mirror, and overhead, there was a set of track lighting you could change the hue of, depending on whether you wanted to see the reds, yellows, or blues of a given hair color or make-up look.

Directly behind her, hanging on a chrome hook, her “wedding dress” such as it was, looked terribly plain. Nothing but an Armani suit with an asymmetrical collar—and the thing was white, because yes, she was the damn bride.

Nude Stuart Weitzman slingbacks were lined up underneath it.

And on a pullout shelf, a dark blue velvet Tiffany’s box that was worn on all four of its corners sheltered the massive Art Deco pin that her grandmother had received upon her marriage to E. Curtinious Bradford in 1926.

The debate was whether she was going to take the two halves off its pin backing and do a Bette Davis, or if she was going to put it off to one side as a whole piece on that dramatic collar.

“Marls—”

In the mirror, her maid appeared in the doorway looking as twitchy as a mouse about to make a bad move with a trap, her cell phone in her palm. “She’s not coming.”

Gin slowly turned the chair around even further. “I beg your pardon.”

Marls
put up the phone as if that proved anything. “I just spoke to her. She said … she’s not coming.”

“Did she indicate exactly why?” Even though with a cold rush, Gin knew. “What was her reason?”

“She didn’t say.”

That little bitch.

“Fine, I’ll do it my damn self. You may go.”

Gin hit the make-up like a pro, a hypothetical conversation with Tammy lighting up her temper as she imagined telling that—what was the word … feckless—that feckless little whore who Gin had been nothing but good to for all these years … all those galas Tammy had been comped on … that fucking cruise through the Mediterranean last year where the only thing the woman had had to do for her luxury fucking berth was slap some mascara on Gin every day—oh, and then what about those ski trips to Aspen? And now that woman doesn’t show up …

Thirty minutes of barely coherent internal monologue’ing later, Gin had her face, her suit and that pin on, her hair cascading over her shoulders, those slingbacks giving her that extra bit of height. The make-up counter had not fared nearly as well as she had. There were brushes, tubes of mascara, and false eyelashes scattered everywhere. A pick-up-sticks mess of eye pencils. And she’d broken one of her powder compacts, the flesh-colored cake cracked and disintegrated all over the rolling table.

Marls would clean it up.

Gin walked out into the bedroom, picked up the pale, quilted Chanel shoulder bag from her bureau, and opened her bedroom door.

Richard was waiting in the hallway. “You’re six minutes late.”

“And you can tell time. Congratulations.”

As she kicked up her chin, she started by him and was not surprised when he grabbed her arm and yanked her about.

“Do
not
keep me waiting.”

“You know, I’ve heard they have effective drug therapies for OCD. You could try cyanide, for instance. Or hemlock—I believe we have some on the property? Rosalinda solved that mystery for us quite readily—”

Two doors down, Lizzie came out of Lane’s suite. The woman was dressed
for work, in khaki shorts and a black polo with Easterly’s crest on it. With her hair pulled back in another of her rubber bands and no make-up on, she looked enviously young.

“Good morning,” she said as she approached.

Her eyes stayed forward, as if she were walking the streets of New York City, determined not to make trouble or seek it out.

“Are you still on the payroll,” Richard said, “or is he no longer cutting checks to you now that you’re not just bringing flowers to his bedroom?”

Lizzie showed no reaction to that. “Gin, you look beautiful as always.”

And she just kept going.

In her wake, Gin narrowed her eyes at Richard. “Don’t speak to her like that.”

“Why? She’s neither staff nor family, is she. And given your money situation, cutting costs is very appropriate.”

“She is
not
up for discussion or dissection. You leave her alone. Now, let’s get this over with.”

A
s
Lizzie descended the main staircase, she was shaking her head. Gin … defending her. Who would have thought that would ever happen?

And no, she wasn’t going down to the mall to get BFFL bracelets for the pair of them. But the not-so-subtle back-up was a lot easier to handle than the condescension and not-at-all-subtle ridicule that had gone on before.

Down in the foyer, she headed around to the back of the house. It was time to do fresh bouquets—with so many late-spring flowers blooming, there was no florist cost, and creating something beautiful was going to make her feel like she was doing work to improve things.

Even if she was the only one who noticed.

Entering the staff hallway, she went down toward Rosalinda’s old office and Mr. Harris’s suite of rooms—

She didn’t make it through to the kitchen.

Outside the butler’s residence, there was a line-up of suitcases. Some photographs and books in a box. A rolling rack that suspended a bunch of suit bags.

Putting
her head through the open door, she frowned. “Mr. Harris?”

The butler came out of the bedroom beyond. Even in the midst of his apparent move, he was dressed in one of his suits, his hair gelled into place, his clean-shaven face looking as if he had put a light layer of make-up on it.

“Good day,” he clipped.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I’ve taken another position.”

“What?”

“I’m moving on. I am being picked up in approximately twenty minutes.”

“Wait, and you’re not giving notice?”

“My check bounced at the bank this morning. Your boyfriend, or whomever he is to you, and his family owe me two thousand nine hundred eighty-seven dollars and twenty-two cents. I believe failure of payment is grounds for me to redact the clause in my contract requiring me to give notice.”

Lizzie shook her head. “You can’t just leave like this.”

“Can’t I? I would suggest you follow my example, but you seem to be inclined to get further involved, not less so, with this family. At least one can guess that you are emotionally vested at a proper level. Otherwise, your self-destruction would be laughable.”

As Lizzie turned away, Mr. Harris said, “Do tell Lane I’m leaving my resignation letter here on the butler’s desk. And try not to depart on a snit, will you.”

Out in the hall, Lizzie smiled at the man as she picked up his box of things. “Oh, I’m not in a snit—or whatever you call it. I’m going to help you get out of this house. And I’m more than happy to tell him where to find your letter. I hope it has your new address on it, or at the very least a phone number. You’re still on the Charlemont Metro Police Department’s interviewee list.”

F
ine, I’ll come to you, Lane thought as he pulled the Porsche in between the gates of Samuel T.’s farm.

The lane proceeded down an allée of trees, which had been planted seventy-five years ago by Samuel T.’s great-grandparents. The thick, rough-barked
trunks supported broad branches of spectacular green leaves, and a dappling shade was thrown across the pale little pebbles of the driveway. Off in the distance, centered among the fields that rolled with grace, the Lodges’ farmhouse was not rustic in the slightest. Elegant, of perfect proportion, and almost as old as Easterly, the clapboard box had a hip roof and a wraparound porch to end all porches.