The Little Death

Chapter Nine

Last night’s rain had lingered, turning the morning as dark as dusk. Louis kept one eye on the curbside street signs and the other on his rearview mirror looking for cops. He hadn’t had a chance to get the Mustang’s broken taillight fixed yet.

Worse, Mel wasn’t along to help. He had begged off the breakfast meeting with Margery Leigh Cooper Laroche because of a blinding headache. Louis was worried, because the headaches, a symptom of Mel’s eye problems, seemed to be coming more frequently.

Margery’s home was “on the third El” off South Ocean Boulevard, Reggie had said. Louis spotted a curb sign: El Bravo Way. He slowed. The next one was El Brillo Way.

Another block, and there was El Vedado. Three Els. He swung a right.

Reggie claimed he didn’t know the house number. “I’ve never had reason to mail anything to her,” he said, adding that it was “the big pink house on the right. You can’t miss it.”

It was a three-story monster of a Spanish villa. And as Louis leaned forward to peer through the sweep of the wipers, he realized the property extended the width of the island from the ocean to the Intracoastal.

Louis turned into the broad circular drive, killed the engine, and jogged through the rain to the massive door under the portico. There was no doorbell, just a tiny security camera tucked into a corner above the door. He stared up at it and finally, feeling ridiculous, gave a small wave.

A few moments later, with a loud click, the door swung open. A small, stoop-shouldered old man in black stood aside to let Louis in. “Mrs. Laroche is waiting for you, sir,” he said in a hoarse, British-accented whisper.

Louis followed the shuffling fellow through a drafty entrance hall of high arches and marble and down a long corridor of polished tiles and mirrors. It was very warm and moist, like there was no air-conditioning. Huge palms in blue ceramic pots sat motionless in the still air. The place looked like an ancient Spanish castle, and Louis’s mind clicked back to the Palm Beach Life magazine he had thumbed through last night back at the hotel when he couldn’t sleep. There was an article on an architect named Addison Mizner, who had single-handedly left his imprint on Palm Beach back in the twenties-everything from Worth Avenue’s little alleyways to oceanfront mansions.

Sam was suddenly in his head, along with her brush-off at the ballet. And Joe was there with her, the sting of her words still in his ears. What did it say about him that he had to read an article about a dead architect three times before he fell asleep?

“Madame is in the loggia,” the old fellow said, gesturing to an archway.

Loggia?

The first thing that registered was the bracing sweep of rain-scented air. Two of the room’s walls were open archways with views of the gray ocean. From the high concave ceiling, painted sky blue, two paddle fans moved in lazy circles. The room was furnished in rattan, its blue cushions gently worn and dotted with limp yellow throw pillows and one needlepoint pillow with a dog’s face on the sofa. A glass coffee table was heaped with art books, glossy magazines, and newspapers, and two table lamps, with bases shaped like squatting monkeys, held out against the gloom. Off in the corner, a wrought-iron table was set with blue and white china, sparkling glasses, and a bouquet of white calla lilies.

“You’re right on time!”

Louis turned. Margery Cooper Laroche floated in on a swirl of rainbow silk. Her bony face was framed in a hot-pink turban. Big white hoops dangled from her ears. Four pug dogs circled her like chicks, snorting and barking.

“I love a man who’s punctual,” she said. “So many people today forget about manners.” She frowned. “Where’s the big bald fellow, Marvin?”

“Mel,” Louis said. “He’s a bit under the weather.”

She waved toward the open window. “Yes, vile, isn’t it? Quel sale! But at least it’s nice and cool out here. You don’t mind being out here, do you?”

Before Louis could answer, she went on, “I don’t use air-conditioning. Bad for the sinuses, and don’t even get me started on what it does to the skin, dear. I mean, why should I pay a hundred bucks for an enzyme peel and then have air-conditioning freeze my face like I’ve been entombed in dry ice like a six-pack of Bud-”

She stopped suddenly. “Listen to me. I’m beating my gums again. I know I do it. Reggie tells me all the time that I do.” Her wide red mouth curled up into a smile. “Next time I do it, you just tell me to shut up.”

Louis smiled as he kept one eye on the dog sniffing at his ankle.

“Can I get you a drink?” Margery asked.

Again, before Louis could answer, Margery yelled, “Franklin!”

The old fellow in black materialized.

“Shampoo, please,” Margery ordered.

The fellow nodded and left. Margery spun back to Louis. “Sit, please,” she said, waving at the rattan.

Louis settled into the cushions of the sofa. Margery arranged herself on a lounge across from him. Three of the pugs bounded into her lap, and she drew them to her like babies. The fourth dog jumped up and positioned itself at Louis’s thigh, staring up at him with baleful brown eyes.

“So, Reggie tells me you want to know what our little island is really like,” Margery said.

What he wanted were the names of any women Mark Durand had slept with. But Louis had a feeling that the only way into Margery’s confidence was via the long and winding scenic route.

“This is a strange place to an outsider like me,” Louis said.

Margery’s hard gray eyes seemed to be taking stock of him.

The butler or valet or whatever he was returned with a tray holding an ornate ice bucket and two stemmed glasses. He set the tray on the table in front of Margery and left.

“Shampoo?” Margery asked, raising the dripping bottle of champagne.

“Please.” Louis accepted the glass and took a drink. He had little to compare it with-just the pink André in a plastic glass Frances let him sip on New Year’s when he was sixteen and some other stuff over the years that tasted like carbonated kerosene.

But this-he snuck a glance at the label that read Heidsieck-this was great, like someone had crossbred pears with Pop Rocks.

He drank down half the glass. Margery was smiling at him as he lowered it. “Swell stuff, huh?” she said.

“Not bad.”

A phone was ringing somewhere in another part of the house. It had been ringing for at least a full minute now, Louis realized. He noticed an old rotary-dial yellow phone on a table in the corner, though it apparently had its ringer off.

Margery seemed not to hear the phone. “Now,” she said, “let’s talk about Reggie. I adore him. He’s like family to me. But he’s a helpless old thing in many ways, and some people here take advantage of his good nature. So, before we go any further, I want to make sure you are a right gee.”

“Ma’am?”

“A good guy. Excuse me, I slip back into the slang of my youth sometimes. I get away with it because I’m so old, and when you get old enough, you’re allowed to mutate into an eccentric.”

The phone finally stopped ringing.

She eyed him. “You’re very young. How old are you?”

“Just turned thirty.”

“How old do you think I am?”

Louis smiled. “I know better than to answer that question when a lady asks it.”

She let out a low-throated guffaw. “Tell me about your background. I want to know what kind of man is going to be helping my Reggie.”

Louis wasn’t sure where to go with this. “I’m an ex-cop. I’ve been working as a private investigator for three years.”

Again, the eyes bored into him. “But who are your people, dear?”

He had been in Bizarro World long enough to know what she meant. Family and name were everything here. He’d be damned if he’d let her intimidate him into spilling his guts about his messed-up childhood. But before he could answer, Margery waved a dismissive hand.

“Never mind,” she said. “That was rude. Lou would have skinned me for asking that.”

“Who’s Lou?”

The wide smile came again but this time tinged with melancholy. “My late husband, Louis,” she said, pronouncing the name “Loo-EE.” “I guess that’s why I told Reggie I would talk to you, because you have the same name. That, and you seem like a right gee.”

“Thanks.”

The phone started up again. Margery leaned forward, sending the dogs flying. She yanked the champagne bottle from the bucket and topped off his glass.

It was ten-thirty in the morning. There was no sign of food coming yet.

What the hell. He took a drink.

“Maybe we should start with me,” Margery said, lying back against the cushions. The little dogs quickly reclaimed her lap. Except for the one at Louis’s thigh. It was still staring at him like he was lunch.

“I’ve lived here forever,” she said. “Well, since I was thirty, anyway. Before that, Lou and I lived in Paris-that’s where he was from, being French, of course-but he was living in New York when we met, in this big old town house on Fifth. He was fifteen years older than-”

She stopped, smiled, and wagged a finger. “You didn’t stop me.”

Before Louis could answer, Margery jumped up, sending the dogs scrambling again. “Franklin! Bring me my book! And the Sears catalogue, too!”

Margery and the dogs resettled into the cushions. “Unlike most of the people here, I wasn’t born into money,” she said. “My people were farmers in upstate New York, and it about killed my momma, so I sure as hell didn’t want to live the rest of my life with dirt under my fingernails.”

Franklin appeared, cradling a large red book and a small black one. He set them before Margery and left, without bothering to pick up the extension of the still-ringing phone.

Margery brushed the dogs from her lap, swept the newspapers off the coffee table, and opened the red scrapbook so Louis could see it.

“Now, where’s my cheaters?” she muttered, looking around. “Ah! There you are.” She snatched up a pair of pink glasses and perched them on her long, thin nose.

“I left home when I was eighteen and went to Manhattan,” she said, flipping the pages. “I got work as a cigarette girl at the Trocadero, and then-” She pointed a long red fingernail. “Voilà! That’s me!”

It was a large black-and-white photograph, creased with age, a full-length portrait of a young woman posed seductively on an ornate cushion. An elaborate peacock-plumed headdress framed her short, wavy hair and lovely face. Other than the headdress and a coy smile, she wore very little else, just some strategically draped pearls and scarves over her chest and long legs.

“You’ve heard of the Ziegfeld girls?” Margery asked.

“Sure.”

“I was one. For ten fabulous months,” Margery said. “I was eighteen, with long legs-that’s my nickname, did I tell you? Legs, that’s what they still call me. Everyone here has a nickname-Buffy, Rusty, Bunny, Hap, Bobo-although Bobo hates it when people call him that.”

Nicknames? For one second, Louis thought of asking her about Sam.

But Margery was still speeding down memory lane. “I wasn’t a star, of course, but I could fake a little dancing, so I got a spot in the chorus. In a jungle number, I got to ride a live ostrich. One night, the damn thing panicked and carried me right out onto West Forty-first Street.”

She laughed. “Lou used to hang around the stage door of the Amsterdam, and finally I gave in and went to dinner with him. A week later, we were married.”

She flipped a page of the scrapbook and pointed to a photograph of a dark-haired man in a bow tie. “That’s Lou. My sheik.”

She sighed and sat back, pulling one of the dogs to her breast. “We lived like royalty for a year. Did I mention that I posed for Guy Pène duBois? You know who he is, dear, right?”

Louis shook his head, but Margery was already off and running again. “Well, then the Crash came, of course, and everyone was jumping out of buildings. Lou had most of his money in gold-God, he was so smart-so we went to live in Paris until it all blew over.”

She stopped abruptly. “Lou died in 1935. A heart attack. Of course, I never remarried. I was goofy for that man.”

Her eyes teared, and she pulled the other pugs close. They began to lick her face.

“How did you get to Palm Beach?” Louis asked.

Margery drifted back. “Well, things were getting a little dreary in Paris, so I went back to New York, but I was all grummy, so I came down here to stay with friends, and, well, I just never left.”

She stroked one of the dogs. “I wanted to start my life over. That’s what people do here. They come to Palm Beach to reinvent themselves. It’s just Vegas with better clothes.”

The phone started ringing again. Louis couldn’t take it any longer. “Should I get that for you?” he asked.

She frowned.

“The phone. It’s been ringing for a while now.”

She cocked her head like a dog hearing a whistle, then leaned closer. “I think Franklin is going deaf. I’d get a new man, but Franklin’s been with me forever, and it’s really hard to find someone who speaks English these days. It’s so hard to understand those Spanish accents and all.”

“Don’t you have an answering machine?” Louis said.

She waved her hand in the air. “It’s bad for the image. I don’t need to hear from anyone. The world comes to me.”

The phone finally stopped. Margery poured out two more glasses of shampoo.

“Now, what exactly is it you want to know?” she asked.

Maybe it was the champagne, but Louis decided there was no point in beating around the bush anymore. If he did, he’d be too shit-faced to remember anything.

“Reggie told me that Mark Durand was sleeping around,” Louis said. “With women. Rich women.”

Margery’s eyebrows almost disappeared into her turban.

“Reggie said you know everything that goes on around here,” Louis said. “I need names.”

“My, my, my, my, my,” she said. “I thought Mark Durand was a dew dropper.”

Louis assumed she meant gay. “Mark told Reggie he was sleeping with women who paid him or gave him gifts. If I’m going to help Reggie, it’s important I find someone who might have a reason to kill Durand.”

“Like a jealous husband? Quel lurid!” Margery said.

“Can you help me?” Louis pressed. “Have you heard anything?”

“My dear,” Margery said, “the kind of information you’re asking for does not come lightly, not even from someone like me.”

“I can appreciate that.”

Margery rose from the chair, again dislodging the dogs. Three of them scampered from the room, as if they’d heard a silent dinner bell. The fourth kept its place next to Louis’s leg, tongue out and panting.

Margery had moved to one of the arches and was staring out at the gray ocean. Her silk caftan fluttered in the breeze. Louis wondered if he’d blown his chance. How could he have expected this woman to turn on her friends to save a guy like Reggie Kent?

“It’s not as if affairs and, God knows, even one-night stands don’t happen here,” Margery said as she took off her glasses and turned to look at him. “It’s just that they don’t happen as you might think.”

“What do you mean?”

She floated back, standing over him with hands on hips. “Well, everyone sleeps around, dear. Well, almost everyone. There are a few people who don’t, but most of them have cheesy little provisions in their prenups that keep them faithful, if not dreadfully miserable. But for the rest of us…”

Margery paused, her brows knitting in deep thought. “To put it bluntly,” she said, “you can screw upward, and you can screw sideways, but you don’t screw down.”

“So, you’re saying someone like Mark Durand would never get a second look?”

“Oh, he’d get the looks,” she said. “He was a succulent specimen. But I just cannot imagine any of my friends passing him around like he was a sexual gimcrack.”

She downed the remaining champagne and looked at Louis with a granite gaze. “And besides, if this sordid little game of stud-boy poker was going on, certainly I would have heard about it.”

“Reggie Kent didn’t know, either, until Durand told him,” Louis said.

Margery held his eyes for a moment, then slipped back into the chair and reached for the bottle of champagne. She poured herself another glass, then grabbed Louis’s wrist and filled his glass.

She crossed her legs and leaned close to him. A cloud of flowery perfume circled his head, but he didn’t pull back. Her voice was almost a whisper, and he wondered why. The only other person in the house was Franklin, and he was apparently going deaf.

“Are you sure that Mark Durand is the only dead boy?”

“Excuse me?” Louis asked.

“I had a thought,” Margery said. “I had a lawn boy once who was a living doll. Tall, golden, and sinewy, like Fernando Lamas in that dreadful 3-D movie about the slave who inherits a cotton plantation and has to tame the woman he loves, all the while fighting off the carpetbaggers with his sword.”

Louis suppressed a sigh.

“Anyway,” Margery said. “One day, Emilio simply stopped showing up.”

“Your lawn boy?”

Margery nodded as she took another drink. “And I was absolutely shocked that he would do that to me. I mean, he was such a nice boy. Very hardworking and serious. I mean, he barely spoke English, but he was always so courteous and sweet to me. I really liked that young man…”

“Mrs. Laroche, what does this have to do with Mark Durand?”

She stared at him. “Emilio disappeared! Vanished! Poof! Well, I am thinking that maybe something bad happened to him, too.”

Louis sat back. It was a preposterous assumption, and he had the feeling she was just miffed that she didn’t know the gossip about Durand, so she wanted to stir up some dirt of her own.

“Mrs. Laroche,” he said, “your yard man-”

“Emilio. His name was Emilio.”

“Emilio,” Louis said patiently. “If he was a day worker with a landscaping service, it wouldn’t be unusual for him not to show up for work.”

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” Margery said.

“Which is?”

“I heard a rumor about him,” Margery said. She frowned, tapping a red fingernail against her turban. “Now, when was it, exactly? Had to have been during the season, of course. I’m thinking it was around the time of the Red Cross Ball-no, it was the Retina Ball at The Breakers, because it was after my last face-lift, and I couldn’t go because I was all blown up like a puffer fish and-”

She stopped suddenly. “Beating my gums again.”

Louis gave her a tight smile.

Margery took a drink of champagne. “I was so worried when he didn’t show up for work for weeks, and then-”

Margery glanced at the doorway and, satisfied that Franklin was not lurking behind the wall, turned back to Louis. “That’s when I heard that he was caught in flagrante delicto,” she said in a low voice.

Louis shook his head. “I don’t-”

“In bed, dear,” Margery said. “The rumor was he had been caught by the husband and chased from the house.” She shook her head. “I never believed it, of course. He was such a good boy, and I always had the feeling he had a wife somewhere.”

“Whose home?” he asked.

Margery shook her head. “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you that,” she said. “It just wouldn’t be ducky.”

“Mrs. Laroche, you said you wanted to help Reggie,” Louis said firmly.

The head shaking grew more vigorous. “This is a small island, young man. I have to live here.”

“Reggie could go to jail if you don’t help,” Louis said.

She stared at him, then her eyes widened. “I have an idea. You can be Robert Redford, and I’ll be Deep Throat, and you can ask me initials, and I can just nod.”

“What?”

“That movie, dear,” Margery said, touching his wrist affectionately. “My goodness, don’t you watch movies? The one with those two reporters, Carl Woodstein and-?”

Louis had had enough. “This is not a movie, Mrs. Laroche,” he said.

Margery set the pug aside and leveled her iron gaze at Louis. “Young man, you needn’t be so patronizing. I am just trying to help. I may be eighty years old, but I still know my onions.”

Louis nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But this is a homicide investigation, and Reggie’s life is on the line. I need names.”

Margery shook her head fiercely. “Bank’s closed on that one. I can’t spill on my friends. You’re just going to have to find Emilio-if the poor boy is still alive, that is.”

Louis set his glass on the tray. The champagne was bubbling in his brain, but he was sober enough to know it wouldn’t do him or Reggie a damn bit of good to push this woman. He had apparently pissed her off, and he had no badge here, no legal right to force her to talk.

“Do you remember the name of the company Emilio worked for?” he asked.

“Green something,” Margery said. “They’re over in West Palm somewhere.”

“And about how long ago did he disappear?”

“I told you, about five years ago.”

Margery reached for the champagne bottle, but it was empty. “Dead soldier,” she muttered, turning the bottle upside down in the cooler.

She stood up, wavering, holding the pug. “Oh, my, I’m rather splifficated.” She gave a delicate belch. “What time is it?”

Louis looked at his watch. “Almost eleven.”

“Oh, futz, I have fitting at Martha’s, and I am going to be late.” She staggered to the door, the pug tucked under her arm like a hairy football. “Franklin!” she yelled.

She turned back to Louis. “You’ll have to forgive me, dear, but I am going to have to get a wiggle on. We’ll do breakfast another time, okay?”

Franklin materialized, along with the other dogs, yapping and bouncing. But Margery didn’t seem to notice. She had gone back to the lounge, where she deposited the football dog on a cushion. She gathered all of the newspapers up and stuffed them into a Saks bag. She hesitated, then picked up the small black book that Franklin had brought in earlier with the scrapbook.

She came back to Louis. “Take these,” she said, thrusting the bag at him. “This is a month’s worth of the Shiny.”

“Ma’am?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, dear, it’s time you called me Margery, please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The Shiny, the Palm Beach Daily News. We call it the Shiny. Think of it as your road map.”

Apparently, she had forgiven him.

Margery held out the black book. “And you’ll need this, too,” she said.

“What’s this?” Louis asked, taking the book.

“The Sears catalogue, dear!” When she saw his puzzled look, she added, “It’s the Social Register. But we call it the Sears catalogue because nowadays the most awful people can get in it.”

She put a firm hand on his arm and started leading him to the door. “But that’s a story for another day. I must fly now. Franklin!”

“Here, madame,” the old gent said.

Margery blinked, trying to focus on him. “Oh, there you are, you utter ghost of a man. Show Mr. Kincaid out, Franklin.”

Franklin shuffled toward the door, Louis following, carrying the Saks bag.

“One more thing!”

He turned back to Margery.

She waggled a red fingernail in his direction. “I don’t like being pushed up against the wall, but I think you mean well, and I think you will be able to help my Reggie. I’ll just have to trust my instincts with you, and, like I said, you seem like a right gee.”

“Mrs. Laroche, I need those names.”

But she didn’t seem to hear what he said. The red mouth widened into a smile. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

And with that, she was gone through one of the archways, the pugs in her wake.

Louis followed Franklin to the front door. It was only after he was outside in the rain that he realized Margery had called him “Loo-EE.”