Too Much Money Read Free Page A

dining chairs away from Lil’s Easter table and sat down and crossed his legs, as if settling in for a long stay. He had heard Lil’s rant about her wicked stepmother getting all the family money so many times, he could repeat it word for word. He hoped the first guest would ring the bell.
    Lil went on.
    “Dodo was a poor distant Van Degan relation that
I
was responsible for bringing into the household after her father jumped off the
Queen Elizabeth
in the mid-Atlantic following a mortifying episode with a deckhand in the engine room that I’d be too embarrassed to go into details about. Her own mother was too drunk to take care of her, in and out of Silver Hill, she practically kept them in business. My poor father paid for all of her stays at great expense. As we all know, no good deed goes unpunished.
    “After Daddy’s stroke, Dodo pushed him around in the wheelchair, and when he became incontinent she didn’t mind cleaning up, and he married her without telling any of us. And then, he left her
everything
, including the Van Degan trust, which, by all rights, should have come to me. She only got the money for life, thank the good lord, but I’ll be long gone by the time the awful Dodo dies, and Justine will inherit everything that I should have inherited, and Justine has already inherited all the Altemus money. I’m the only one left out in the cold without anything. So, Gus Bailey, today is
not
the day to talk about the cause of Hubie’s death.”
    “You’ve put me in my place,” said Gus. “But, tell me, aren’t there other reasons for you moving from this fabulous apartment, Lil?”
    “I can’t walk up that beautiful stairway since the hip replacement,so I have to go out in the hall and ring the elevator man to take me up to the next floor so I can get to my bedroom. And it takes five or six in help to take care of an apartment this size. It’s gotten out of hand. But those are just excuses. I would hold on to this place regardless, but my nephew tells me I’m running out of money. If you had any idea of how those words terrify me, Gus.”
    Lil caught herself before she got too emotional and smoothed down the front of her skirt. “I’m going to miss this place, but I’m certainly not going to miss living in the same building as Perla Zacharias, thank you very much, with all her guards in the lobby, and her limousines blocking the parking space in front of the building, so that my driver has to double-park on Fifth Avenue, and I have to walk sideways between her Rolls-Royces, which are taking up all the room. It’s such a nuisance, especially when it rains. Really, the nerve of that woman. I cut her dead in the elevator, and she still tries to speak to me.”
    Gus leaned in.
    “Do you want to hear an Easter Sunday secret that nobody knows?”
    “Of course I do,” said Lil.
    “Not for repetition.”
    “You can count on me not to repeat it to a single soul,” replied Lil.
    “I just made a deal to write a novel based on Perla’s life and the tragedy in Biarritz … for lots of bucks,” said Gus.
    “Oh, my dear. Brave you. Perla’s not going to be happy with you. Don’t you ever worry about how people will respond?”
    Gus smiled.
    “All the time.”
    “Someday, when we have lunch, just the two of us, you
must
tell me about the fire at the villa in Biarritz. I’ve heard you tell itat dinner parties several times, but I think you’re holding back. There’s something fishy about that story, don’t you think? I mean, the Zachariases had all those guards, and there wasn’t a single one on duty the night of the murder. Pul-eeze. And didn’t I read in your diary in
Park Avenue
that the poor male nurse who’s in the Biarritz jail signed the confession in French, a language he doesn’t speak? Pul-eeze again.” As Lil paused to ponder this, across the apartment she saw her butler, Dudley, hasten to open the door to her first guests. “Oh, look, Gus, here comes Adele Harcourt. Doesn’t