Well Bred and Dead Read online

  WELL BRED AND DEAD

  A HIGH SOCIETY MYSTERY

  Catherine O’Connell

  For Fred

  With gratitude and love

  It is not with whom thou are bred, but with whom thou are fed.

  —MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, Don Quixote

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1

  Cold Lunch

  2

  It’s Not Who You Know

  3

  Finding Solace

  4

  No Good News

  5

  A Letter from the Grave

  6

  The April Fool

  7

  Flying Economy (No) Class

  8

  Window Shopping

  9

  Burial Grounds

  10

  Two No Luggage

  11

  Don’t Touch My Bag if You Please

  12

  Power of the Press

  13

  Tempting Fate

  14

  Getting Warmer

  15

  The Crotch

  16

  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

  17

  Unrequited Lust

  18

  Another Unclaimed Body

  19

  Date Rape?

  20

  Spring Cleaning

  21

  Last Rites

  22

  The Unpleasant Sting of Reality

  23

  The Circle

  24

  Soup to Nuts

  25

  The Truth Will Out

  26

  In the Black

  27

  Champagne for Everyone

  28

  Does Anyone Know Anybody

  29

  Payoff

  30

  Never Talk to Strangers

  31

  Unwelcome Guests

  32

  Restitution

  33

  A Quiet Evening at Home

  34

  A Tale of Two Ethans

  35

  On the Morrow

  36

  Such Sweet Sorrow

  37

  Nemo Me Impune Lacessit

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The clock ticked the morning away slowly, each second an eternity as I battled the alternating demons of boredom and fear. I was hungry and thirsty and, worst of all, I had to use the bathroom, as my captors had not given me the opportunity to do so before taking their leave. My body ached from the pull of the ropes, but any attempt to shift my position made it feel like my joints were dislocating. My hair stuck to my face in greasy copper clumps with the exception of one obnoxious strand that tickled my nose in an excruciating manner. Since the duct tape over my mouth prevented me from simply blowing the hair away, I turned my head into the pillow and painfully managed to rub it aside. Throughout the ordeal Fleur remained faithfully at my side, flicking her tail as she studied my predicament with feline curiosity.

  Wondering just how much longer I could hold out before soiling both myself and my Frette sheets, not daring to contemplate how long I might last without food and water, I stared at the ceiling and reflected upon my life. I thought about what I would have done differently given the opportunity to live it over again. I would have been a kinder, more caring person. I would have spent less on couture clothes and high-end cosmetics and more on others. I would have gotten involved in philanthropic activities that actually touched the needy, like food banks and homeless shelters, instead of the high-profile events that put one on the A-list, like the Tiffany Ball. I would have been more sympathetic to my mother’s plight and her struggle for dignity, instead of blaming her for Grandmother’s disinheritance.

  I might have even had children.

  Of the many things I would have done differently, two stood out far and above the others. I never would have invested my money in derivatives, and I never, never, never would have befriended Ethan Campbell.

  1

  Cold Lunch

  The thing that really irks me is that I paid for Ethan’s funeral. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do, seeing as he had made me his heir. Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have put out a single sou, much less the small fortune I spent to see to it that he had a proper send-off. But Ethan knew me all too well and knew I would tidy things for him, that I wouldn’t be able to live with the thought of his remains ending up in some unmarked grave or as an anonymous pile of ash in the county morgue.

  Looking back, much of his deception shouldn’t have come as a surprise. There were inconsistencies about him all along, starting with his awkward table manners and ending with the seedy area in which he lived. These are not customarily the ways of one to the manner born. But Ethan was a writer, and since writers are known for their eccentricities, I simply chose to attribute Ethan’s to his literary bent. Thus, not only did Ethan’s charade take me completely unaware but the depth of it was as unanticipated as an earthquake in the Midwest.

  Now I’m getting ahead of myself. Though Ethan’s story really begins the moment he was conceived, it became my undoing the day I went to his apartment and found the body. Prior to that, the thought of Ethan as anything other than my best friend would never have crossed my mind. What followed afterward just shows how little we know those we think we know best.

  It was the rare spring day in Chicago, a city whose climate can best be summed up in two words: winter and August. The sky was a cloudless silky blue, the air wrung dry by a westerly wind that whisked the city’s notorious humidity out over the lake. The swollen buds on the trees looked ready to burst their seams, and the sweet scent of cherry blossoms perfumed the breeze. Venus rising from the foam, spring coaxed, and her public was happily seduced.

  My mood was exceptional as I stepped from my co-op building onto the short costly street known as East Lake Shore Drive. Across the busy lanes of the outer drive, Lake Michigan stretched endlessly before me, her slate blue waves folding gently onto the shore. The public beach bristled with humanity as the prisoners of Midwestern winter took advantage of the unexpected parole. Joggers and bicyclists crowded the paved trail while sunbathers sprawled across the sand, guilelessly soaking up the sun’s disfiguring rays. Apart from the crowd, two lovers were entwined on a hastily thrown blanket, groping each other with abandon. Indifferent to the presence of other beachgoers or the vantage point of the high-rise buildings that loomed above them, they acted as though they were the only souls on earth. I watched their antics with a pang of envy, realizing that far more than a few lanes of asphalt separated our worlds.

  I turned and walked away at a leisurely pace, past the tulip-filled gardens and Beaux Arts facades of the city’s priciest real estate. When I reached the Drake at the end of the block, the doorman nodded at me in polite recognition. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Cook,” he said, tipping his hat. He swept the door open with a gloved hand. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed, Raymond.” I acknowledged him with a polite smile. Ethan and I had a standing twelve-thirty reservation in the Cape Cod Room every Wednesday afternoon, so our faces were well known at the hotel. Our ritual had been established after our very first meeting more than five years before, and was never broken unless one of us was out of town—or if something of greater urgency came up.

  I stopped inside the arcade to check my watch and noted with satisfaction that the time was one o’clock, making me precisely thirty minutes late for my lunch date. I seldom arrive anypla
ce on time. I feel it makes one look desperate. Farther down the corridor, a couple of attractive men in business suits were locked in what appeared to be serious conversation. Upon seeing me they fell silent, their heads pivoting as their eyes followed me to the restaurant entrance. When one is a five-foot-ten redhead with extremely long legs, one becomes accustomed to such responses. Although I’m certain it didn’t hurt that I was wearing my new magenta suit from Feraud’s spring collection, an acquisition that cost far more than I had any right to spend at the time. But it fit me as though it were designed with me in mind, and besides, I’m a winter. Bright colors flatter me. As a woman ages, she must learn to become less dependent on her looks and more dependent on her style. With my half-century mark looming ominously before me in the coming year, mere days before the world would pass into the new millennium, I had already learned to appreciate how one’s clothes can carry the day as the other attributes fade.

  Not that I conceded to fading quite yet. One thing I had to thank my mother for was good genes. From her side of the gene pool came my long legs; auburn hair; a compact, slightly upturned nose; luminous skin; and an ample bosom. I say ample, not large, thankfully. Nothing like those dreadful drooping appendages Sunny Livermore was cursed with or the overinflated balloons Whitney Armstrong had surgically installed. Finding couture to hang properly over bustlines like those must be challenging at best.

  The only thing I inherited from my father was my eyes. Ironically, many say they are my best feature. Deep-set and emerald green, they tilt slightly upward at the corners like a cat’s. When we first met, Henry used to tease me about their color, saying he thought my eyes couldn’t possibly get any greener until he saw them reflect money.

  Michel, the longtime maître d’ of the Cape Cod Room, greeted me warmly from his post just inside the restaurant door. My eyes darted immediately to Ethan and my regular table expecting to see his small figure patiently awaiting me as always. But his chair sat empty, which was a puzzlement. Ethan was seldom late. If anything, he was usually insufferably early. Scanning the dimly lit room to see if he could be visiting elsewhere, I spotted Marjorie Wilcock lunching in a corner booth with Franklin James. Their affair was one of the worst-kept secrets in town—no surprise since they chose places like the Cape Cod Room for their illicit rendezvous. Half the Gold Coast dines there weekly.

  Marjorie looked up and our eyes locked. Not the least bit abashed, she raised a hand and waved me over. I fixed my most gracious smile and navigated the busy room to their table. Franklin appeared to have aged since I last saw him at the Zoo benefit with his wife. His face was puffy and swollen, his eyes saggy and red-rimmed. Marjorie’s bony face was as put-together and perfectly made-up as always, but she was so thin that she looked a bit…tired. Both had voluminous stemmed glasses parked in front of them. We made small talk as if there were nothing untoward about the two of them huddling together in a dark corner, closer than a pair of Siamese twins.

  “Pauline, that suit is divine,” Marjorie said, salaciously eyeing my latest purchase over the rim of her glass. “Wherever did you get it?”

  “This? It’s just a little something I picked up for spring at Neiman’s,” I replied with masterful understatement. “You haven’t seen Ethan, have you? We’re supposed to meet for lunch.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Marjorie gushed in a manner telling me the martini she held in her hand hadn’t been her first. “Haven’t seen him in ages, actually. How’s his book on Daisy Fellowes coming along, by the way?”

  “Remarkably well,” I lied, loyally stretching the truth on Ethan’s behalf. Though he had conducted countless interviews and compiled reams of material about the Singer sewing machine heiress, he confided in me that he hadn’t actually written much yet. His agent and I were the only people alive who knew this. Had his publisher known, he would have gone into an apoplexy. Ethan had received his advance well over a year ago.

  “Well, if it’s as juicy as the Gloria Guinness book was, I can hardly wait to read it. He certainly leaves no stone unturned.” She winked in a conspiratorial way I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. Everyone knew about Daisy Fellowes’s legendary sexual prowess, her countless lovers—among them several ebony ones—and her discarding of them when they no longer suited her purpose. However, Marjorie was capable of giving Daisy a run for her money. Franklin wasn’t the first man to share martini lunches with her in the bowels of a convenient hotel.

  We made some more small talk before I excused myself to go telephone Ethan. At the time, I believe I was one of the few people in the Western hemisphere who hadn’t yet succumbed to the cell phone, considering them the rudest assault on good manners in recent history. I was appalled by the way strangers suddenly felt free to share the intricacies of their personal lives with anyone within hearing distance, from last-minute grocery items to be picked up to their latest stock market acquisitions to their nocturnal successes. Being of the mind that anyone with the slightest bit of decorum conducted one’s business in private, I chose to remain a hold-out from their ranks.

  In the ladies lounge the attendant changed a dollar for me. I put fifty cents in the pay phone and listened as Ethan’s phone rang repeatedly with no answer. Assuming him to be in transit, I hung up and took a seat at the vanity, fussing with my makeup in order to give him ample time to arrive.

  I always looked forward to lunch with Ethan. It was often the high point of my week. Ethan was my oasis of civility in the cut-throat competitiveness of everyday living, the one person to whom I could bare my soul. He knew just about everything about me, from my past lovers to my sorry financial situation. Aside from that, he was witty and engaging and a virtual font of information who counted the better part of Chicago’s socially elite women among his acquaintances. Ethan had the inside scoop on nearly everything, from who joined AA after planting her face in her sole meuniere while dining with her in-laws at oh-so-proper Onwentsia to who was sleeping with their soon-to-be-ex’s divorce attorney. But despite Ethan’s vast collection of female friends, he and I shared a special relationship that rose above the others. Ours was a friendship rooted in far more than societal dictates and idle chatter.

  I tipped the attendant my remaining fifty cents and returned to the restaurant where Ethan’s seat remained glaringly empty. This time I had Michel seat me, nonetheless, and ordered my usual seafood salad and a glass of Premier Cru Chablis. I sipped at my wine in silent irritation and avoided glancing in the direction of Franklin and Marjorie. Not that it made any difference at that point. By then the two of them were more oblivious to others than the couple on the beach. According to Ethan, Franklin’s wife had recently caught on to his hijinks and filled Marjorie’s husband in on the gory details. He told me they had recently been served with divorce papers and were in shock over it, though probably more over what it was going to cost them than the lost affection of their respective spouses. Maybe that explained why Franklin looked so tired.

  My salad arrived and I picked at a crab lump in solitary displeasure, wondering what could possibly be delaying Ethan. And then it struck me like a misplayed chord of Rachmaninoff. Ethan’s answering machine hadn’t picked up! He was positively religious about leaving that machine on at all times, lest he miss a returned call from an interviewee for his book or, even worse, a social invitation. Last night on the phone he had complained that his new blood pressure medication caused his ankles to swell. Since Ethan was a confirmed hypochondriac, I hadn’t paid attention to his complaint at the time. Now it reverberated in my brain.

  I placed my fork upon my plate and signaled Michel for the check.

  Traffic was light on Lake Shore Drive as I sped north toward Rogers Park and the fringe neighborhood Ethan called home. Whenever I dropped him off there, on those rainy or snowy nights when I couldn’t bear the thought of him shivering away at a bus stop, I was all too happy to see it retreating in my rearview mirror. I turned onto Ethan’s street and nearly collided with three unsavory characters standing smack dab
in the middle of it smoking cigarettes. With their spiked hair and with chains dangling from not only their belts but their ears and noses as well, I imagine they would be called punk rockers. When I honked at them, they glared at me with defiant glassy eyes, as if I were the problem, before moving sluggishly aside like sheep on an Irish country road.

  Ethan’s dreary gray mid-rise stood mid-block. My spirits were buoyed to see an open parking space directly in front of it. I angled in between two wrecks and turned off the car, noticing in my mirror that the punk rockers had shuffled back into the street behind me. Though genuinely concerned about Ethan, I found myself suddenly apprehensive about the security of my car. Not only was mine the only luxury vehicle in sight, it was most certainly the only 1972 limited edition Jaguar XKE in opalescent metallic bronze.

  Feeling I had no other choice, I got out and hurriedly locked the car. As I walked around to the other side, I discovered why the parking space had been open. There was a fire hydrant situated squarely in front of the passenger-side door. Having yet to see a police car anywhere in the area, I calculated the risk of getting a parking ticket as low, certainly lower than that of having my hubcaps stolen. Glad my insurance premiums were paid up, I left my late husband’s prize possession and prayed it would remain in the same condition until my return.

  The entry of Ethan’s building was even seedier than one might imagine. The drab floor tiles were chipped away in several places, revealing a lighter shade tile suggestive of the floor’s color in an earlier, cleaner era. Junk mail and flyers from local eateries were strewn about, and a freestanding ashtray, the type that usually holds sand, held no sand at all, though the metal bowl overflowed with cigarette butts just the same.

  A second glass door that led to the interior lobby was locked. I located a directory listing of the tenants and pressed the button next to CAMPBELL, E. After several tries and no response, I turned back to the directory and located a button simply marked MANAGER. After pushing it repeatedly and getting no answer, I held it down with my index finger. Finally, a coarse metallic voice crackled at me through a small vented intercom.