The king was in his countinghouse counting out his money...
— Anonymous
His first night spent under Archie Peevers’s roof hadn’t done anything to improve Grady’s mood, and his mood hadn’t been all that great in the first place.
Now, having been summoned by his client, he leaned against the mantelpiece in Archie’s apartments and glowered at the old man, who was sitting cross-legged in his bed, preening himself before a hand mirror held by Dickens.
“Do I look sick enough?” Archie asked. “Sullivan? Dickens? Maybe some pale powder on my cheeks? I don’t want to look too robust tonight when Asswipe and the rest of them come barreling in here for their after-dinner visit to tell me they’re going to have me certified and locked up. I held them off yesterday, saying I was too sick, but that trick won’t work twice.”
Grady studied Archie for a few moments. There was no question the man was old. Skinny and wrinkled and old. But there also was no mistaking the man’s good health, not after seeing the man in action ten minutes earlier when Grady had come into the room, to see Archie, nightshirt tails flying, chasing some young woman around the chairs in front of the fireplace.
The maid, young and blond and unbelievably stacked, had giggled, straightened her tight blouse, and run past Grady, looking him up and down as if she might be interested and hoped he was, too. Which he wasn’t. After all, a man had to have some standards.
“You see them all every day after dinner?” Grady asked, pushing himself away from the mantel. “Then why am I here now? It’s hours until dinner. Or are you having second thoughts about this whole thing? If so, I can be packed and out of here in ten minutes.”
Archie pushed the mirror away and looked at Grady. “Your heart’s not in this yet, is it, boy? All right, we’ll make it five thousand a day, and not a penny more. So, you ate dinner with the fruit of my loins last night. What did you think of them?”
In answer, Grady pulled a small notebook out of the back pocket of his khaki slacks and began thumbing through it. “A.W.,” he read. “Oldest son and totally whipped by wife Mitzi, who spent the entire first course telling me of all the people she knows on the Main Line.”
“Quite the social butterfly, our Mildred,” Archie said, nodding. “Surprising what money can buy these days. Shame you missed Asswipe Junior, who’s busy flunking out of his third college. In Switzerland, thank God, practicing his snowboarding. I gave him twenty thousand dollars after he promised not to come back here until Christmas. Who knows, maybe I’ll be lucky, and he’ll fall off a mountain.”
Grady couldn’t be sure, but he thought he actually heard Dickens mutter, “Amen.”
“Let me tell you something about Asswipe,” Archie continued, “give you some idea of how he thinks. I don’t go in to the office anymore, you know. Haven’t for twenty years, have been locked up here for the past ten. But that doesn’t mean I don’t run the place, even if I had to give Asswipe a title. Anyway,” he went on, grinning around his too-large dentures, “we have a board meeting once a week, and I use one of those squawk boxes or whatever they’re called now, to talk to everyone, listen to them yes-sir me like the spineless twits they are, Asswipe included. Big square box, stuck right in the center of the conference table. Asswipe painted it pink, and supposedly he throws spitballs at it when I’m talking.”
“Charming,” Grady said, trying not to look at Archie. He wanted to talk about Annie Kendall, who had taken dinner in her room last night. If he hadn’t been told she was in residence, he’d believe she was a figment of Archie’s overactive imagination. But today he would demand to meet her. No question.
“Yeah, well, I’m just trying to tell you. If anyone’s going to try to kill me, boy, it won’t be Asswipe. He’s got all the spine of a jellyfish. Mildred will have to hire a hit man, and don’t think she hasn’t thought about it! Now, go on.”
Grady flipped over the page after scribbling “watch Mitzi” in the margin. “Muriel Peevers, spinster daughter of Archie Peevers—”
“Ah, Muriel,” Archie interrupted yet again, batting away Dickens’s hands, as that man tried to secure a nightcap to Archie’s head. “Let me tell you about Muriel. Her mother was a Barton. Barton’s Cigar Tobacco? Ring a bell? Not that I wasn’t doing all right, mind you, but marrying money never hurt anyone. Thing was, I had to take the woman along with the money. Couldn’t go near a Corona until she was dead two years. She kept going to the office, you understand, to be with her dear daddy. Then came home smelling like tobacco. Came to bed, smelling like tobacco. They’re not kidding, you know— tobacco can kill you. Damn near killed me, just smelling it.”
Grady closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “If we could get on with this? Now, about Miss Kendall...”
“When I’m ready,” Archie said, then went on with his story as if Grady hadn’t interrupted. “Anyway, we named Asswipe after her daddy, which got me another bucket of money. When Muriel was born, I just couldn’t pass up another chance for a bundle. Muriel... cigars. Get it? Don’t just stand there like a stump, boy! Do you get it?”
“Got it,” Grady answered, beginning to feel sorry for Muriel, for all of the Peevers children. He’d had a small talk with Muriel after dinner last night, and rather liked the woman. She looked like her father, which pretty much explained her marital status, to Grady’s mind. Fifty if she was a day, and looking older, Muriel was devoted to her “Daddy.” Try as she might to impress Grady with the depth of that devotion, he’d come away with the idea that she’d much rather be devoted from a distance, but didn’t have what it took to make the break.
“Archie, Junior,” Grady said, pushing on, wanting to get this over with so they could move on to other things. Like Annie Kendall, for one.
“Junior? Ah, now there’s a waste of good seed,” Archie said, sitting up so that Dickens could plump his pillows for him. “There wouldn’t have been a Junior, you know—the wife had been sleeping alone for ten years, thank God. But I could see by then that Asswipe wasn’t going to amount to a hill of crap, so I had to do something. What is it they used to say? Close your eyes and think of England? All cats are grey in the dark? All that stuff? Doesn’t work, let me tell you. Trick was to get drunk, but not too drunk, you know what I mean? Too drunk and the little soldier won’t be able to stand up and salute.”
Grady coughed into his fist, trying not to laugh. There was no getting around it; he was working for a true Original. An original what, he still wasn’t quite sure. And he silently agreed with Archie about his youngest son. Junior surely was a waste. He must look like his deceased mother, which wasn’t much of an endorsement, and his blatantly dyed black hair and too-tight silk shirts gave him all the appeal of a racetrack tout. And then there was Daisy...
“You’re thinking about the woman, aren’t you? You’d have to be, with that sort of deer-in-headlights look you’ve got right now. Not Junior—who nobody thinks about if they can help it—but the woman, right?” Archie asked. “She was there, wasn’t she? Of course she was. She’s always there, hoping to be wife number four. What did you think of her?”
There were two ways Grady could go on this one, and neither of them appealed. “She seems to be fond of Junior,” he said at last, trying his best to take the high road after watching Daisy and Junior groping each other at dinner.
“Ha! Good one, son. You could go into politics with an answer like that. Daisy. Hah! Empty-headed as a Daisy, maybe, but there’s a well-oiled Venus flytrap between her legs, I’m thinking, because Junior seems to spend most of his time there. You should see what I’ve seen from this window, with the two of them out there in the gazebo. Sent Dickens outside with a bucket of water to throw on them one time, didn’t I, Dickens?”
“Yes, sir, you did,” Dickens said, having completed his “arranging” of Archie, stepping back to admire his work. “She’s been waiting for ten minutes now, sir. Shall I fetch her?”
Grady flipped the notebook closed and slid it back into his pocket. Finally! “She? You mean Annie Kendall?”
“No,” Archie snapped. “I mean Eleanor fricking Roosevelt and her all-girl band. Are you always this dim, boy?”
“I took this course, a few years ago,” Grady remarked calmly, seating himself in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. “Twenty ways to kill a man without leaving a mark. Maybe, in my spare time, I’ll show a few of them to your kids. God knows they need all the help they can get.”
“Ah, touchy, isn’t he, Dickens?” Archie said, pretending to shrink against the pillows. “Oh, very well. I’ll be nice.”
“Sure you will,” Grady said, crossing one long leg over the other. “And I’ll take that five thousand a day. If I’m supposed to keep you alive, I need some pretty hefty incentive, and, believe me, your sunny disposition just isn’t cutting it. Now, before Dickens lets Miss Kendall in here, I think we need to lay down some ground rules.”
“Ground rules? Like what?” Archie asked, looking— finally—just a little bit ashamed of himself. Nobody dared to talk to him the way Grady Sullivan had just talked to him. He liked it. He liked having a new audience. Hell, if he weren’t so old, and probably dying, he’d be having the time of his life.
“Well, I could start by telling you that I didn’t know she was here until this morning, and I should have been informed. That’s one, although it’s a minor inconvenience. Secondly, I want to know if she’s aware of what she’s getting herself into.”
Archie looked to Dickens, who began examining the tips of his shoes. “Into? What are you talking about, boy? She’s my Sally’s granddaughter. My granddaughter. She came here telling me she is, and I believe her.”
“Right,” Grady said, standing up one more time and heading for the door. “Forget the five thousand, forget you ever heard my name. I’d suggest you call Fritz and Barani, on South Street in Philly. Fritz is a certified moron who calls himself a private dick because he thinks it wows the chicks, and Barani was a beat cop who got busted for taking a bribe. They should be dumb enough for you.”
“If you’ll recall, sir,” Dickens said, “I did tell you I didn’t think Mr. Sullivan was suitably money-hungry. Our investigation did provide us with the information that he is independently wealthy and therefore might not be bought as easily as you’d hoped. And then there was that distressing summa cum laude degree. Perhaps this is just as well.”
Grady stopped, his hand on the doorknob, and turned around. “You investigated me?” He let go of the doorknob and walked back into the room. “Why, you... you miserable sonofabitch. You”—he jabbed his index finger under Archie’s nose, then his own chest—“investigated me?”
Archie pushed back the covers and got out of bed, showing more of his hairy, skinny legs than anyone could like. “Now, boy—son—don’t get your knickers in a twist. Of course I had you investigated. And you passed, with flying colors. Use your head, boy. I’m worth over a billion dollars these days—even more, dead. Do you think I’d let just anyone into this house?”
Archie had a point, much as Grady didn’t want to admit it. He took in a deep breath, let it out with a rush. “All right, all right, I’ll accept that explanation. But it doesn’t change anything. Either you’re straight with me, or I’m out of here. Starting with this girl, this Annie Kendall.”
“Ah, let me guess. This is the private eye? Not all that private, though, as I could hear him bellowing clear out in the hallway. I hope you don’t mind that I decided to join you, as I heard my own name mentioned?”
At the sound of the woman’s voice, Grady had turned around to see Annie Kendall, better-looking than the headshot he had in his room, standing ten feet away from him.
“Hi,” she said, her smile bright as she came forward, right hand outstretched, definitely in an attempt to put herself in charge of the situation. “I’m Annie Kendall, and you must be Grady Sullivan. Do you carry a gun? May I see it? I’ve never seen a gun, not up close and personal.”
Grady ignored the question as he took her hand, felt her firm grip, the smoothness of her palm. She looked good. She smelled better. Before he found himself thinking in Philip Marlowe, P.I., sentences like, “She was an accidental seduction that screamed danger inside my head,” he released her hand and stepped back. “Ms. Kendall,” he said.
“Annie, please, Grady. I’ll call you Grady. After all, if you can’t be on a first-name basis with the man who obviously thinks you’re either an unscrupulous, gold-digging impostor or a hired red herring, what good is there left in this world? Oh, don’t frown. I talked with Archie yesterday, and he told me what he’d decided you think of me.”
“I didn’t say you were a gold digger,” Grady said, wondering how she’d gotten her eyes to look that same strange, near-colorless grey as Archie’s. Contacts couldn’t do that, could they? The color had to be real. “For all I know, you’re as much the victim here as you are anything else. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Annie looked to Archie, who had crawled back into his high, wide bed and was watching the two of them. “Archie? I think the ball’s in your court?”
“All right, all right,” Archie said, clearly depressed that he was going to have to give up at least some of his game. “Annie here came to me a few weeks ago, telling me she’s Sally’s granddaughter. My granddaughter. Now, I figured she was blowing smoke, except that I did have this... this thing with Sally for a while. Not that it matters. Girl doesn’t have any evidence but an old letter. I was going to send her away, and then it hit me. If I said she might be my granddaughter, even moved her in here, I could have some pretty spectacular fun watching Asswipe and the others going crazy, wondering if I was going to cut them out of the will and put Annie here in it.”
“Some pretty spectacular fun,” Grady repeated, shaking his head as he looked at Archie, then at Annie. “I wouldn’t believe that, except I’ve had the dubious pleasure of listening to you yesterday and today, and such a stupid, selfish stunt sounds like something right up your alley. But I’m here, or so you told me, because you’re afraid one of your nearest and dearest is going to try to kill you. Was that a lie?”
“Dickens?” Archie said, waving toward the nightstand on the other side of the bed. “Show him.”
“Yes, sir.” Dickens withdrew a pair of thin rubber gloves from his pocket and took his time putting them on, one finger at a time. He then walked around the bed, bent his rigid back as he pulled open the top drawer with both hands, reached in, and pulled out a small glass filled with what looked to be orange juice. A thin plastic wrap had been spread across the opening.
“Orange juice?” Grady said, taking the glass when Dickens offered it, then peeling back the plastic wrap and sniffing the liquid. “What’s so unusual about— damn. I smell almonds. Somebody put arsenic in your juice?”
“Correction, boy. Somebody has been putting arsenic in my juice. Every morning, for at least a month. That’s this morning’s glass. Not enough to kill, obviously, as I think I drank some that first day, before I noticed the bad taste—what is it? We get old, we lose our hair, our teeth. Do those idiots think we lose our senses of smell and taste, too? So, do you believe me now? One of my nearest and dearest as you call them is out to snuff me slowly, wipe me out, cancel my check, punch my ticket, shut out my lights. Damn straight I hired you!”
“Why didn’t you just go to the police?” Grady asked, pretty sure he already knew the answer.
Archie sat up in the bed, the tassel hanging from the end of his nightcap slapping against his cheek. “This is my family, you idiot. You don’t call the police on your family, your blood, your seed.” He settled himself against the pillows once more. “Not until you have rock-solid proof, anyway.”
“The orange juice is proof,” Annie pointed out, walking over to sit on the edge of the bed and take hold of Archie’s hand.
“I could have put the arsenic in there myself,” Archie told her. “That’s just what those circling buzzards downstairs would say, just to prove that I’ve lost my marbles and need to be locked up in a rubber room. I can’t take the chance. No, I’ve got to catch whoever it is red-handed. It’s the only way.”
“Red-handed, huh?” Grady said, watching Annie stroke the back of Archie’s hand, almost as if she had some feelings for the old goat. “Would that be while that someone is trying to kill you—or your newly discovered granddaughter?”
“He is smart,” Annie said, leaning over to kiss Archie’s cheek before she stood, turned to face Grady. “Archie really doesn’t believe I am his granddaughter,” she told him. “He does, however, see the possibilities in letting his children think he believes I’m his granddaughter, which is why I was hired. I believe he also has had some more time to consider what he’s doing before I got here yesterday, and has hired you, not just to protect him, but to protect me as well, as I could be his granddaughter. At least that’s what he told me yesterday. That’s rather sweet, don’t you think?”
“I think I can’t tell the players without a scorecard, that’s what I think,” Grady said, stabbing his fingers through his too-long sandy hair. “Let me get this straight, okay? You came here, out of the blue, to tell Archie you’re his granddaughter, and then he decided to—”
“No, not quite right. Archie was fibbing on that one, and I thought I could keep up that story, but I can see you won’t settle for less than the whole truth,” Annie said, holding up a hand as she interrupted him. “You see, it didn’t happen quite that way. I saw an advertisement in a magazine in the doctor’s office—I read the personal ads from time to time—asking if there might be anyone out there believing they could be related to a family named Peevers.”
“You placed an ad in the personal column?” Grady asked Archie, shaking his head. “How many people answered it?”
“They wrote to a postal box, Mr. Sullivan,” Dickens explained. “It was all most discreet. We got no more than three hundred replies, and they were all easily sorted out.”
“Sandy helped,” Archie said, nodding. “He’s my doctor. Dr. Milton Sandborn. He’s been my doctor forever. Good man, his vitamin shots are what’s keeping me alive, I’m sure of it. Anyway, we read the letters together, looked at the color photographs they all had to send, and we picked Annie Kendall. I liked the name, you understand. Once had a good time with a girl named Annie, but that’s neither here nor there, is it? It was the eyes that sold us. I’d been hoping for a boy—hell, I’ve been hoping for a boy for fifty years, and look what that’s gotten me! But, in the end, we settled for Annie.”
Grady began to pace, believing he was finally, finally, hearing the truth. A bizarre truth, granted, but it had the ring of misguided sincerity to it. “Okay, I think I’m with you so far. You placed an ad, you hired Ms. Kendall— Annie. You know she’s not real, she knows she’s not real, and I now know she’s not real. You’re only doing this to scare your children, and to hope someone takes a potshot at Annie instead of you.”
* * *
He wheeled around, glared at Annie. “Are you getting any of this, or was the money just too good to turn down? You’re setting yourself up like a sitting duck. For money?”
“The money is one reason,” Annie told him, smiling. She had the most infuriating smile. Kind of like she was saying, without words: “You stupid schmuck.” She stood next to Archie’s bed, held his hand. “I like Archie. I want to help him. And, hey, a job’s a job. This one has great fringe benefits.”
“You like him.” Grady said the words as if he was carefully pronouncing them in an unfamiliar language. “Yeah. Right. Sure you do. And Pamela Anderson Lee just got lucky with Mother Nature in the boobs department. Cut me a break here, Annie. Just how much do you like Archie?”
“About fifty thousand dollars’ worth for one month’s work,” she said with an honesty that made him want to choke her. “Although I will now admit to being a little bit worried. The orange juice, you understand. I was having some second thoughts on my drive here. But, as I was driving here in my brand-new convertible, I fought them down. And now you’re here—wasn’t that brilliant of Archie?—and I’m not worried at all.”
Dickens, who had been quiet for some minutes, approached, holding a large manila envelope. “We’ve taken the liberty of preparing some background information for Miss Kendall, sir. The old birth certificate with her grandfather father listed as Unknown. The letter, on carefully aged paper, from her mother, telling her she’s Mr. Peevers’s granddaughter. Information you might share with any of the Peevers children anytime you see fit. You are here, sir, as far as the children know, to investigate Miss Kendall’s claim.”
Grady took the envelope, slapped it against his thigh a time or two. “You’re all nuts. You do know that, don’t you? This isn’t a game we’re playing here. First I’m hired to protect Archie, which is a bunch of crap, Archie, because you’re about as helpless as a barracuda. Now you tell me I’m here to pretend to investigate Annie’s supposed claim, which is more crap. And you’re all running around inciting a possible murderer just because Archie thinks it would be fun. If I can believe you, somebody could get very dead before this is over. Hell, if this keeps up, I could end up the prime suspect.”
“Are you always such a party pooper, Grady?” Annie asked. “What a pity. Well, if you’ll all excuse me now, I want to take a shower before dinner. I just can’t wait to meet the rest of my new relatives.”
As she brushed past him, Grady all but growled, “If you think I’m going to become your official taster, you’ve got another guess coming.” She laughed, and left the room.
“You go, too, boy,” Archie said, popping a handful of pills into his mouth as Dickens handed him a glass of water. “My lawyer’s due any minute, to begin work on a new will. My fifth this year, I think, although I don’t keep track. Dickens tells me he has to replace the scotch in the drawing room twice as often after one of Banning’s visits. Ah, yes,” he said, snuggling under the covers. “We’ve going to have a great month, boy, a real hell-raising, ball-busting month!”