Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead Read online

  Jack felt his throat constricting, and he tried to stand but fell back into his chair. Heart attack?

  Stan glanced at his watch and said, “Just a few more minutes.” He let Jack know, “Cindy is considering coming back. Part of our problem was money, but I think I have that straightened out now.” He asked, “Isn’t that good news? Jack?”

  Jack was concentrating on trying to breathe, but it felt like someone was sitting on his chest.

  Stan watched him for a few seconds, then said, “Hang on. I’m almost finished.” He leaned across the table and continued, “Anyway, as I said, when I saw that life insurance bill, I had a bad thought, an evil thought, and I felt very guilty about it. So, when you invited me here, I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to reconnect. I actually have some good news for you about a movie deal I’m working on for two hundred thousand for one of your older and better books. I was going to tell you about it when we got back here last night.” Stan looked at Jack, frowned, and said, “But you tried to kill me.”

  Jack managed to shake his head.

  Stan seemed annoyed and impatient, then snapped, “Well, you were thinking about it. But Mr. Macho got cold feet. Or maybe you realized how stupid your plan was.” Stan added, “You’re losing your balls and your brains.”

  Jack felt a flood of acid rising in his stomach and he thought he was going to vomit, but nothing came up except a stream of sour-tasting bile that made him gag.

  Stan seemed not to notice and said, “So, I thought to myself, if Jack wants to kill me for the insurance money, then maybe I should kill Jack for the same reason.” He looked into Jack’s eyes and asked, “Do you see my point?”

  Jack noticed that the backs of his hands were turning purple and swelling.

  Stan noticed, too, and said, “I think you’re having an allergic reaction. Like anaphylactic shock. Did you eat something that you’re allergic to?”

  Jack managed to croak, “You… bastard…”

  Stan stood and retrieved the can of nutritional supplement and read the ingredients. “Vitamins… minerals… uh-oh… ground oyster shells.” He looked at Jack and asked, “Aren’t you allergic to shellfish? Deathly allergic?” He put the can down and gave Jack a look of contrite concern. “Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry. I put this stuff in the omelet, too. Oh, my God, Jack, I think you’re going to die.” Then he suddenly smiled as though just realizing something and said, “But it’s not all bad news. The good news is that I’m going to make five million dollars. That’s the best deal we’ve ever done together.”

  Jack managed to stand and stagger to a kitchen drawer. He opened it and withdrew an EpiPen filled with adrenaline, the antidote to the deadly allergic reaction.

  Stan snatched the device out of Jack’s hand and said, “You don’t need that. I’ll call an ambulance. Right after you stop breathing.”

  Jack felt his knees buckling and slumped against the counter. His eyes were so swollen he could barely see, but he did see the chopping board that Stan had used to cut the chives, and on the board was a knife. With all the strength that remained in him, he grabbed the knife with his swollen purple hands and plunged it into Stan’s chest.

  Stan looked at the knife in disbelief, then staggered back, blood spreading over his yellow silk pajama top.

  Jack Henry and Stan Wykoff stood staring at each other; then Jack slumped to the floor, followed by Stan.

  They lay side by side on their backs, each of them in respiratory distress—though for different reasons—and each on the verge of cardiac arrest. Jack felt his airway closing and the room was getting dark. Stan’s chest wound was bubbling frothy blood, and wheezing sounds came from his mouth.

  Jack drew a final gulp of air through his constricting windpipe and got a single word out of his mouth. “Bastard.”

  Stan felt himself drowning in his own blood but managed to reply, “Has-been.”

  Both men lay on the cool terra-cotta floor, staring up at the rotating ceiling fan.

  Jack’s last thought was of a silly cartoon he’d stuck over his desk—horned demons with pitchforks driving a crowd of people through the gates of hell, and there was a sign over the gate that said, “Authors Must Be with Their Agents.”

  THE PIRATE OF PALM BEACH

  BY TED BELL

  Well, Barney, I suppose the Palm Beach Social Season is now officially under way,” Charles “Cholly” Forsythe IV said, breaking the staid silence. Observing the harbor through binoculars, Cholly was addressing a small, podgy, and (at best) middle-aged man to his left, both rocking away beneath the paddle fans on the Reading Verandah of the Marlin Club.

  Heads swiveled, not because Forsythe’s comment was particularly earth-shattering, but because anything one decibel above a whisper was frowned upon. Abuse this rule and expect a black-edged card from the social secretary. Wouldn’t be pleasant reading, either.

  Ill-behaved members up at the Hobe Sound Club got even more chilling communications. Fall into disfavor there, and you soon discover a discreet white box in your mailbox, containing a black sweater. No note attached because the meaning was clear: the dreaded black sweater meant Mrs. Nathaniel Knickerbocker had decreed you were no longer welcome at the club.

  The Marlin Club stood on the island of Palm Beach’s northernmost tip, not facing east to the blue sparkle of the Atlantic, but rather west to the placid waters of Lake Worth. Established in 1894, the venerated old club provided docking and harbor facilities, a safe haven for the members’ yachts, down from Newport or New York for the Season.

  The club’s lofty location afforded a crow’s-nest view of the comings and goings of the long white yachts steaming into and out of Palm Beach. An ideal spot to keep track of whose yacht was down this year and whose yacht was not. Thus, Forsythe’s constant use of binoculars on the verandah.

  Cholly Forsythe, you see, kept an eye on things in Palm Beach. In fact, Cholly kept an eye on everything. Forsythe was the society editor of the Palm Beach Breeze. Had been for years, writing under the nom de plume of Winnie the Pooh. The column was an island institution; most everyone jump-started the day with Cholly’s acidic musings before turning to the ho-hum New York Times, also known in town as the Daily Worker.

  Forsythe—a somewhat reptilian, Capote-like figure, sixtyish—wrote with a biting, tongue-in-cheek snobbery that was simply outrageous, but people loved hearing him say in print the very things they fervently wished they could say, or had said themselves at dinner last evening. Victims of Cholly’s mighty poison pen had many things to say about him, the kindest of which was, “At least the son of a bitch stabs you in the front.”

  The Marlin was a fishermen’s club, and Cholly did a lot of fishing. But he was a bottom-feeder, his prey salacious tidbits, not the finny denizens of the deep. One of Cholly’s early columns had stated that there were only three types of men to be found bellying up to the Marlin’s boat-shaped bar of an afternoon: the rich, the famous, or the merely alcoholic. Needless to say, he got the black card.

  He also dug for dirt strolling the pristine velvet greens and fairways at the Palmetto Club off Worth Avenue. Also, Mrs. Post’s formerly fabled Mar-a-Lago; McCarty’s eponymous saloon; and, especially, Taboo, a hot-spot gin joint on Worth where, after hours, the old boys went looking for the young girls and vice versa. Taboo was Palm Beach’s very own gossip particle accelerator.

  One bright December morning at Taboo, Cholly, brunching alone, heard nature’s clarion call. Making his way back to the loo, he heard half the fire trucks and EMS vehicles in town screech to a stop outside, sirens wailing. Firemen and policemen barreled inside, elbowing through the crowded bar. People screamed, thinking the joint was afire.

  “Hell’s going on?” Cholly asked the barkeep.

  “See that woman seated four stools down? In the pink sequined Scaasi halter top?” he said. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

  “Breathes there a soul on this island who doesn’t?”

  “Well, she’s naked.”
/>   “What?”

  “From the waist down. Went to the ladies’, took off her skirt and panties, made her way back through the crowd, and now she’s perched totally bare assed atop that stool. Ordered another martini, I refused, she made a stink, and I called the cops.”

  Strapped to a gurney, her modesty covered with a blanket, and with six firemen acting as pallbearers, the smashed socialite sailed out gaily, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

  Winnie knew them all, of course. The truly, the merely, and the nearly rich. The demigods, the semigods, and the gods. The swells and the ne’er-do-wells. The antisocials and social climbers (referred to as “Alpinists” in his column); the poseurs; the pathetic; the penniless European “counts of no account,” who drove ancient, monogrammed Rolls-Royces in vile colors up and down the avenue.

  He knew, too, the elderly, elegant ladies of old Palm Beach, silently sipping tepid tea behind their thick silk draperies, the Last Victorians, the women who truly ruled this roost, but whose names or pictures were never, ever seen in the Breeze or anywhere else until the day they died.

  “I’m just a hound who loves the smell of bloodlines,” Cholly had once said of himself in a Social Diary interview.

  Winnie the Pooh’s true identity was one of the best-kept secrets on this small, tight-lipped barrier island. Here, family secrets were hidden, nurtured, and protected like hothouse orchids. Secrets existed in great profusion and many of them, thank heaven, followed their keepers into the grave.

  But not all.

  Occasionally, like naughty faeries on gossamer wings, flitting in tropic breezes, Palm Beach whispers escaped captivity to captivate the nation. Like those awful Kennedy or Pulitzer affairs many, many years ago; those were the explosive national bombshells that gave Cholly his big break in the gossip business.

  “Season under way, you say, Cholly? Good lord. You silly ass, it’s not even Halloween yet,” Barney Dodge whispered, the Wall Street Journal spread across his expansive lap.

  Dodge, a native of this verdant paradise, who’d sent his kids and grandkids to the Day School, had retired some years ago after a long and distinguished career in the “inheritance business,” sometimes referred to sub rosa as the “lucky sperm” club.

  As a card-carrying member of the Old Guard, Barney Dodge knew precisely when the hell the damn Season started. And it certainly wasn’t a week before Halloween!

  “What on earth makes you think the Season has started anyway?” Barney asked Cholly.

  “Well, for one thing, my dear boy, take a look at whose yacht just dropped anchor in the middle of our little pond,” Cholly said, ordering two more iced mint teas from a hovering waiter.

  Dodge raised the binoculars hung round his neck and said, “Well, I’ll be damned, Forsythe, you’re right for once. He certainly is early this year. Last I heard, he was cruising that beautiful yacht of his off Saint-Tropez with some French starlet or two.”

  “Hmm.”

  Two iced teas in chilled glasses with sprigs of mint appeared, the tray set upon the wicker table. Swizzling his drink with the long silver teaspoon, Cholly said, “Is the yacht’s notorious owner aboard, Barney? Have another look.”

  When Dodge raised the binoculars, Cholly, seeing all his fellow readers deeply engrossed, quickly slipped the long thin spoon inside the pocket of his silk jacket. The club’s iced-tea spoons were sterling, and Cholly had about twenty of them at home, been taking them for years. Not that anyone noticed this petty thievery. And if anyone ever did, blame would fall upon the help, not the members.

  Like a lot of Palm Beachers, Cholly had his own little secret (actually quite a big secret) and he guarded it ferociously. At age twelve, Charles Forsythe IV had discovered that he was a raging kleptomaniac. Caught a few times and arrested as a kid, he’d been sent to a psychiatrist and all that foolishness.

  But he wouldn’t, couldn’t stop, and he’d quickly learned how not to get caught. An old bachelor who’d always found sex exceedingly unpleasant, he loved the thrill of his private little game, the frisson of pleasure he got from stealing. The delicious, almost erotic secrecy of it all.

  And who knew how to keep a secret better? Cholly Forsythe had all the keys to all the closets where all the skeletons on the island were hidden. Tremendous power, he often thought with a shudder of pleasure, sitting by the fire in his small Moorish palace on El Vedado. Because of this treasure trove of intimate knowledge, he had unlimited power over these powerful people, whenever he chose to wield it. The island was littered with the social remains of the once mighty who’d dared to cross swords with Cholly Forsythe.

  And most of them never even saw it coming.

  Meanwhile, Barney Dodge eyed the newly arrived yacht. The Narcissus. A gorgeous black-hulled schooner, she was an annual source of some irritation to Barney. Unlike his own oceangoing behemoth, Cut Bait, the Narcissus had been designed in the twenties by the famous New England yacht designer John Alden. And she looked the way a yacht ought to look: Yar.

  He gazed at Cut Bait, grimacing. He kept her at the club and lived aboard her year-round. Two crewmen were varnishing her teak rails. Yar? Hardly. What she was, was a giant fiberglass bathtub, designed by Kohler of Wisconsin.

  The Narcissus was a 130-footer with teak decks, Sitka spruce spars, a gleaming mahogany cabin house, and a lot of history, too. The movie star Errol Flynn had owned her back in the forties.

  She was called Zaca back then and had been requisitioned by the Navy during World War II. She’d been fitted with antiaircraft machine guns for coastal patrols. After the war, so the story went, Flynn flew to Washington and asked the naval chief of staff if he could keep the machine guns. Request denied.

  Aboard Narcissus, a buxom blonde in a skimpy thong bathing suit was lounging in the cockpit with the famous yacht’s owner, an extraordinarily good-looking, mysterious, and somewhat controversial character with the unlikely name of Blackford Blaine.

  “You know everybody in society, Cholly,” Barney said. “What’s the story with this Blaine character, anyway?”

  “Just what everyone else knows. Wealthy Chicago family, meatpacking, like the Swifts and the Armours. St. Paul’s. Harvard. Olympic medal for sailing. Got bored making millions on Wall Street and decided to become the playboy of the Western world. Frankly, Dodge, I don’t like the cut of Mr. Blackford Blaine’s jib. Never have.”

  “Chicago, huh? That’s odd. Harry Fiske once told me he went to kindergarten in Tuxedo Park with a tough little kid named Blackford Blaine.”

  “Did he now? That is odd, Barney,” Cholly said, delighted, making a mental note.

  “LOOK LIVELY ON the foredeck!” the Narcissus’s owner and skipper shouted to two of his crew, a pair of Dartmouth kids, racing forward to secure the yacht’s mooring buoy. “Steady now, lads, ease the main halyard, drop the foresail. Ready about!”

  There was a rustle and snap of canvas as both the mainsail and the jib came fluttering down, the mainsail collapsing in a heap on the great wooden boom and the foresail puddling on the foredeck. No longer under sail, the Narcissus ghosted to a stop dead abaft of the chosen mooring.

  “Nice piece of sailing, Skipper,” the leggy blonde said, slathering more sunscreen on her sumptuous pneumatic bosom. Blackie had met this southern belle in Savannah at a swell dinner party given in his honor by Mrs. Georgia Barnwell, one of Blackie’s wealthy “benefactors,” on his way south. Ended up inviting her aboard for the last leg of the voyage to Palm Beach. A cute little hell-raiser, already married three times, each one richer.

  A good girl, though, loads of fun. But a little too hyper. Never seemed to feel the need for sleep. Did the New York Times crossword puzzles all night long, scratching away. Middle of the night, she’d shake him awake and say, “Blackie, what’s a three-letter word for sex?”

  “Sex,” he’d reply before rolling over and going back to sleep.

  And she was always damnably wide-awake when he roused himself, usually around the cra
ck of ten. Propped up against the pillows, the prow of her magnificent bosom barely obscured by some scanty gown, smoking cigarettes, gulping oceans of black coffee, and constantly underlining things in some kind of book or other.

  “Blackie, you finally awake?”

  “Yes, my sweet,” he replied, raising his crimson silk sleep mask, cracking one eye, silently pressing a button that would bring Naga, his Japanese houseboy, running from the galley with Blackie’s daily eye-opener, an elixir known as a Bloody Bullshot. “Breakfast of champions,” he called it.

  Blackie was no health nut, but he had read somewhere or other that beef bouillon was good for what ails you. Chock-full of vitamins or minerals or something of that nature.

  “You drink too much,” the kid sniffed as he tipped the cup. He gave her a wink.

  “Stopped drinking once, baby. Most boring twelve hours of my life.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “Domo arigato, Naga,” Blackie said, draining the potion gratefully and returning the silver julep cup. He looked over at her and said, “Naga here has a great voice, but he only knows one song. Like to hear it?”

  “Why, I’d just adore to hear it!” she said with her southern lilt, putting down her book of Tibetan folklore.

  “Let ’er rip, Naga,” Blackie said.

  Naga smiled, puffed himself up and sang.

  “Hot ginger and dynamite,

  There’s nothing but that at night,

  Back in Nagasaki,

  Where the men they chew tabaccy

  And the women wicky wacky wooooo…”