“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly.
— Mary Howitt
Archie Peevers had the lined, time-ravaged face of a man who might be wearing a nightcap as he stared in horror at the Ghost of Christmas Past just then floating menacingly at the foot of his bed.
Banishing the thought as unprofessional, if accurate, Grady Sullivan stood just inside the double doors of the cavernous bedroom on the second floor of the Peevers Mansion and stared at the man who’d made a fortune in toilet paper and who’d probably just figured out he couldn’t take it with him. The fortune, that is, he corrected mentally, not the toilet paper.
Grady remained in the foyer of the bedchamber—yes, the place was big enough to have a foyer, and velvet draperies in the archway as well. Entering Peevers Mansion had been like turning his wristwatch back several dozen years.
Agatha Christie could have planned an entire murder-mystery novel to take place in this one room of the old mansion, and never run out of descriptive phrases. Somber. Bloodred-velvet drapes. Dark, heavily carved furniture from another age, one best forgotten. The overall musky smell of old age.
The victim’s body laid out for viewing. “It looks like I’m already too late. He is dead, right?” Grady asked the butler, Dickens (now there was a coincidence Grady could hang his hat on).
“No, sir. Mr. Peevers most certainly is not deceased. I’d know, sir,” Dickens intoned severely, his expression a reprimand—directed toward him or Peevers, Grady wasn’t sure. The old guy, nearly as ancient as Archie Peevers, Grady decided—who dated, figuring conservatively, from the last ice age—was really into this butler thing. Dickens actually wore a black tuxedo complete with starched, white, collared shirt and tails.
Tall, nearly as tall as the six-foot-two-inch Grady, the butler had the build and posture of a Marine drill sergeant and a voice so deep Grady was tempted to call him “Lurch.” If it hadn’t been for the man’s mop of silver hair, and the fact that Grady believed the old guy could probably slam-dunk him without raising a sweat, he might even have said so out loud.
“He’s not dead? Well, I’ll give him this, he does a damn good impression of dead,” Grady responded instead, still coolly looking at Archie Peevers, who still hadn’t moved. He just lay there, jackknifed against about a dozen pillows, his long, bony fingers crossed over his chest, his nearly colorless grey eyes staring unblinkingly in the general direction of the foyer, his skeletal body barely visible beneath the covers.
“I don’t want to sound like a bad comedian—but how can you tell? Do you have a mirror you can hold up to his mouth, to see if he’s still breathing?”
At Grady’s last question, the corpse blinked. Then it grinned, which was worse, as the fine set of dazzling white dentures had been made for a much younger and fuller face. “Gets ’em every time, don’t it, Dickens?” Archie Peevers cackled as he sat up. Not laughed, cackled. Grady knew the difference. In fact, if the old fart laid an egg, it wouldn’t surprise Grady even a little bit.
“We were playing possum, were we? How very naughty of you, sir,” Grady said, his own tone caught halfway between sarcasm and deliberate condescension toward the batty old man in the bed. Oh, okay. So it was all sarcasm. Grady hadn’t been happy to be dragged all the way from Philadelphia to Peevers Mansion just outside Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on such short notice.
It was Wednesday, for one thing, six days earlier than he thought he was supposed to have reported for the job. Grady’s day on the golf course. It was September, and hot as hell, for another. But here he was, and here he’d be staying for about a month, if the contract sent to him by the Peevers’s lawyer, someone named Jefferson Banning, couldn’t be broken.
“No, smart-ass, we were checking you out,” Archie snapped back at him. “Don’t want me a bodyguard who pisses his pants the first time he’s tossed a small shock, ain’t that right, Dickens? Now come here, come here, or do you expect me to keep shouting at you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Grady said, shaking his head. “Sorry, but you jolly boys are just going to have to find yourself another straight man.” He turned to Dickens, who looked ready to grab him in a half nelson. “I’ll find my own way out, okay?”
“Oh, shit on it!” Archie shouted, and Grady watched as the supposedly dying old man threw back the covers and aimed his bare, skinny, blue-veined legs and feet toward the floor. “Who told me you could take a joke? Quinn-somebody. Can see how wrong he was. What’s your idea of funny, boy? Milton Berle in a dress?”
At the mention of his partner’s name, Grady stopped in the process of turning his back on the eccentric millionaire and turned back, to watch the walking cadaver all but skip across the room. Archie Peevers was suddenly the vision of good health, if not the sort any sane editor would advertise on the cover of a “better health” magazine.
Grady did a quick inventory of his recollections concerning the Peevers job. He was to come to the Peevers Mansion, camp out there for a few weeks, assure some nutty old bird that his nearest and dearest weren’t trying to kill him for his money. Simple job. Almost kindergarten level, plus moving him out of the city during the hottest days of late summer. Piece of cake. Walk in the park.
Except that he now knew Quinn had been a part of it. Quinn, who he’d pretty much trapped into an assignment a few months ago. Quinn, who should be over the moon about how well that assignment worked out—considering he was now happily married to the object of that assignment.
But that was just like Quinn. He’d promised to get even with Grady, and Quinn always kept his promises. Grady could see it now. Jefferson Banning had contacted D&S, talked with Quinn, and Quinn had sicced him on his unsuspecting partner and good friend, telling the lawyer not to mention his name.
No wonder Maisie, their receptionist, and the person who really ran D&S, had asked if she could please, please come along for the ride, even offering to make the job part of her vacation time. She probably had a video camera tucked up in her luggage, already planning the entertainment at the office’s annual Christmas party.
Okay, so he’d wring Quinn’s neck once this was over. And maybe Maisie’s, too, as it was her job to screen the nutcase jobs at the door.
Still, he asked. Just to be sure.
“You talked to my partner in D&S Securities? You talked to Quinn Delaney? I thought your representative had come straight to me with his proposition.”
Archie raised one extremely long, gnarled index finger, poking it in the air above his head. “Exactly my point, sonny! Who can’t you trust? The ones closest to you, that’s who. Your loving family, and all that crap. You shouldn’t trust your own partner. I know I can’t trust that brood of vultures I call my family. Which is why you’re here, remember?”
“Because you think your relatives are out to kill you. Gee, I can’t imagine why, you’re such a sweet old fart,” Grady said, walking past the toilet-paper king and sitting down in one of the bloodred-velvet high-backed chairs in front of the cold fireplace. “And you want me to watch your back while I also sort through those same relatives, figuring out which one of them has the guts to really sneak in here and slit your throat, or whatever.”
“Ha! None of them has the guts to do that, sonny. Poison. That’s what I think. Poison, pills, a midnight toss down the stairs. Something low and sneaky. Which is why I have a plan of my own. You may be good, sonny, but I’m better, and it’s my life we’re trying to save, remember. Dickens, show him my plan,” Archie said as he skipped across the room in his knee-length nightshirt and hopped back into bed.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Peevers,” Dickens said, bowing from the waist like a character in an old English movie. He crossed the room to a huge chest of drawers, put one liver-spotted hand on each ornate brass pull, and slid open a drawer, reaching inside to take out a thin manila envelope.
Grady took the envelope from the man’s outstretched hand, one eloquent eyebrow raised as the butler backed away, taking up his position against one wall, his hands now folded in front of him as he stared into the middle distance. Grady made a mental note to check under the guy’s tails, just to see if he could find the spot where Peevers inserted the windup key. He turned the envelope over a few times, still debating whether or not he really wanted to be here, then opened it, dumping its contents on his lap.
“Who’s this?” he asked, picking up all that spilled out, a single photograph of a young woman. A smiling young woman caught somewhere between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. A woman with a curly mop of coal black hair and grey eyes. Nearly colorless grey eyes. Wiseass eyes. A wiseass smile. Nobody’s fool, this woman, and yet he doubted anyone else would see that. All they’d see was a beautiful woman. Grady saw a smart, beautiful woman. Not his type at all. He liked his women beautiful, sure, but dumb. They were less trouble that way.
This little lady had Trouble written all over her.
Grady looked at Archie, looked at Archie’s eyes, saw the same nearly colorless grey. “Another relative crawling out of the woodwork, Mr. Peevers? I thought I already had been made aware of all of them. Attorney Banning forwarded me quite a large file, complete with pictures.”
“Banning?” Archie snorted. “Do you think I’d trust an attorney with every little secret? Especially Jefferson Banning, who stands to make a bundle as executor of my will now that his daddy’s dead and he’s inherited me. No, this little girl is extra. A sort of surprise I’m springing on my dear relatives now that you’re here to watch the fun.”
Grady might have felt he’d been caught in a time warp, was playing a part in an Agatha Christie novel, or had found himself on one of the less successful Disney World rides, but he was still pretty quick to pick up on Archie’s game.
He held up the photograph again, looking at the photographer’s mark on the back. Liisa of Baltimore. Out of state. “Ah, yes, the obligatory missing Peevers heir,” he intoned seriously, wishing he could get away with a Charlie Chan accent without having Dickens wake from his trance and stomp on him. “How very... predictable.”
“Ain’t it just, sonny? But what works, works. Right?” Archie said, rolling back onto the pillows as he laughed out loud. Not a pretty sound, or a pretty sight, but Grady refused to look away.
“Who is she, really?” he asked, once Archie had laughed himself out in appreciation of his own joke. That took a while, especially as his hilarity was followed hard by a coughing fit that reminded Grady of a cat choking on a hairball.
“Who is she? Damned if I know, sonny. Calls herself Annie Kendall. Says she’s my long-lost granddaughter. Her mommy being a bastard birth, of course.” His grin faded suddenly, and he motioned to Dickens to finish the story.
“Mr. Peevers did indeed have a romantic interlude some fifty years ago with a young lady by the name of Sally Beckman, a maid here at Peevers Mansion. Miss Kendall asserts, without proof, that she is Miss Beckman’s granddaughter and, as follows, Mr. Peevers’s granddaughter as well. The mother, Mr. Peevers’s daughter, and the grandmother, Sally, are both deceased.”
“Sally, dead,” Archie said, leaning back against the pillows once more. “Sally, Sally, Sally. Love of my life, she was, Sullivan, and no lie. Dead now, of course, and my child, too. Only the granddaughter left. I’d give her every penny, if she’s really my flesh and blood. Better than those buzzards circling, waiting for me to croak. Not that they’re circling. They’re too busy milling around downstairs, eating like elephants and drinking up all my best booze. Oh, Sally, Sally. You’re the only one who really loved me.”
“Yeah, right. I think I’m getting misty.” Grady looked at Archie, who was looking and sounding like a ferret with dyspepsia, then at the stoic Dickens.
And Grady knew. In that instant, watching Archie’s bad acting, seeing the slight tick in the butler’s cheek, he knew.
Archie Peevers didn’t still pine for Sally Beckman, if there ever even had been a Sally Beckman. This guy didn’t like anybody, yet alone love anyone. It was an act, all an act. And he, good old Grady, had been cast in the role of helpful dupe—with no honorable way out.
Damn, damn, damn.
Grady wanted out of the room at least, and he wanted out now. He needed to think. “Speaking of booze, old man, do you have anything to drink in this mausoleum? Because I sure could use a belt.”
“Then you’ll be taking the position of bodyguard, sir?” Dickens asked.
Grady looked at the photograph once more. Nice face, nice eyes. Killer smile. An air of confidence that was nearly palpable. And, smart as she thought herself to be, probably without a clue as to how much trouble she could be in, coming to Peevers Mansion, trying to take a slice of the old man’s money. Although she didn’t look like a con artist. Then again, how many successful con artists look like con artists?
“Yeah, I’m taking the job, especially since I already signed the contract that says I’m to be here for a month at two thousand a day. I’ll assume you’ve already arranged to have my assistant’s and my luggage transferred to our rooms? I’d like to meet with my assistant now, if you don’t mind, go over the packet of information from Attorney Banning one more time, and then meet with Mr. Peevers again after lunch.”
“Yes, sir,” Dickens said, also ignoring the overacting Archie, who was now hugging one of his pillows, stroking it, still repeating, “Sally, Sally.” He walked to the nightstand beside the bed, the one holding about two dozen prescriptions bottles, poured a glass of water, and tapped two small blue pills into his palm. “Here, sir. These will help calm your jangled nerves.”
“Dickens, how good you are to me. And how grandly I’m going to handsomely reward your many years of service when I’m finally called to my reward.”
“Yes, sir, just as you say, sir,” Dickens said, bowing before he took the empty glass and replaced it on the table. “I’ll bring your lunch in one hour, sir.”
“He’s really dying?” Grady asked, as the two of them left the bedroom, closing the double doors behind them. “And why don’t I think he is?”
“Probably, sir, because Mr. Peevers has been dying for the past ten years, which is when he took to his bed and began playing with his offspring and the rest of us.”
“Playing, Dickens?”
“Yes, sir. You’ll become quite used to seeing Attorney Banning climbing the front stairs, to make changes in Mr. Peevers’s will. It’s at least a weekly occurrence these past few months, and certainly does serve to keep us all hopping.”
“Except maybe one of you is getting a little tired of the game?” Grady suggested, beginning to understand why Archie Peevers thought he needed a live-in bodyguard and general snoop.
“Hopping, sir, is quite exhausting. There is a small refrigerator in your room, stocked with most anything you need, including liquor, sir,” Dickens said, then left Grady standing in front of a closed door in the west wing of the mansion. “The bell for lunch will ring in one and one-quarter hours. Promptness is always appreciated, sir.”
“Sure, sure,” Grady said to the butler’s retreating back. “Catch you Lurch... er, later.” Then he opened the door to his bedroom and saw Maisie sitting on the edge of the bed, her stubby legs swinging back and forth a good two feet off the floor as she grinned at him.
“Don’t make yourself at home, you traitor,” Grady growled, slamming the door behind him.
“And don’t you think we’re bunking together, honey, not that I couldn’t get the hots for you and your pretty green eyes if I gave it half a try, which I won’t,” she said, standing up. “We’ve got connecting rooms. I just unpacked your stuff, like a good little assistant.” She cocked her head to one side. “Tell me, honey, don’t those skimpy little underpants ride up?”
“I’ll thank you to stay out of my underpants, Maisie,” Grady said with a straight face, walking past his “assistant” and flinging the manila envelope on the bed before collapsing in a chair. “I owe you one, you know. You and Quinn both.”
“You owe me more than one, honey,” Maisie quipped, taking a long silver file out of her skirt pocket and running it over a nail as she leaned against one of the tall bedposts. “We can start with a raise in my salary, once we’re finished here. Be a good boy, honey, and make sure that doesn’t take too long. I think I saw this dump in a horror movie once.”
“Why, Maisie, I thought you’d love it here,” Grady said, and she stuck out her tongue at him. He looked around the high-ceilinged room full of dark wood furniture and heavy draperies. “You know, this place would make a hell of a funeral home.”
“Not if you do your job right, honey.” Maisie laid down the nail file and picked up the envelope, slid the photo of Annie Kendall onto the bed. She frowned, looked at Grady, picked up the photograph, then frowned again.
Maisie had a blatantly dyed, artificially curled mop of red curls around her full, round face, a face Charles Schulz might have drawn. Right now the fairly impressive brain under those rioting curls had her looking like the comic version of perplexed. She tossed the photo back onto the bed. “Who’s the girl? Pretty thing. Almost beautiful. Should I be jealous, honey?”
“She’s a last-minute addition to our cast of characters,” Grady told her, unable to sit still. He got up, went over to the desk he’d seen in front of the large double windows, and opened the top file on the pile Maisie had laid out for him. “An illegitimate granddaughter, supposedly, who Archie may give all his millions to, or at least that’s what he hopes his relatives will think. Damn.”
“I don’t get it, honey. If he gives all his money to her, our job is over. You’re home again, home again, honey, and no more weeping and gnashing of teeth from all the eligible and ineligible ladies in Philadelphia. Why are you so upset?”
“Why am I so upset?” Grady raked his fingers through his shaggy sandy hair. “I’ll tell you why, Maisie. I don’t believe old Archie’s in any danger. According to his lawyer, there have been no attempts on his life, nothing. I believe we’re wasting our time. But if I’m wrong about that—and it’s a big if—and if Archie is right? Well, then, don’t you see what he’s doing, why we’re here?”
“Not a clue, honey,” Maisie admitted. “But run your ideas by me, and maybe I’ll catch on.”
“If someone is really trying to kill the toilet-paper king, Maisie, then the smartest thing he could do is to give them someone else to kill. Another target, Maisie. Play it up big, say how this is his long-lost granddaughter, he’s sure of it, and he’s going to give her all his money just as soon as I can check her credentials—not that he mentioned that part of the job, but it figures.”
Maisie shook her head. “Nope, sorry. Still don’t get it, honey. But don’t stop trying.”
“I said, Maisie, he wanted a new target, if one of his relatives really is trying to kill him. Me, I guard Archie. Meanwhile, bang, bang, the granddaughter’s dead, the killer is locked up, everyone else is scared back into submission, and Archie goes on cackling and playing his game for another ten years—at which time he’ll be ten years older than dirt. His kind never die young, or so Grandfather Sullivan always said. Got it now?”
“Ah, yes, now I understand. A sort of deep, twisted Machiavellian plot, or whatever that is, right, honey?” Maisie sat down on the bed, picked up the photograph of Annie Kendall once more. “She does have those same grey eyes I’ve seen on a lot of the other photos. Very distinctive shade of almost nothing. Is she really a Peevers?”
Grady shook his head. “No way. It’s too pat, too B-movie, too bad novel. He’s hired her, I’d bet on it. He hasn’t left the house in ten years, so she probably came to see him, trying to run a con, and he either called her on it and they’ve gone into business together, or he decided to pretend to go along with her. Either way, he’s using her. And he’s put me smack in the middle of the whole damn, twisted thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone took a potshot at me, just because I’m going to be the one who’s been hired to prove she’s legit. Archie didn’t get around to that part yet, but I think I’m safe in assuming at least that much.”
“Wow, and I thought I was going to get to work on my tan on company time. Honey, this isn’t the sort of assignment I had in mind when I volunteered.”
“So you’re leaving?” Grady asked.
Maisie grinned. “Leaving? What? And give up showbiz? Honey, don’t be ridiculous. Now, when does this Annie Kendall get here?”