P. Parrish - The Little Death

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.”