In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [28]
“On my terms, this time,” she said. Then, remembering the Four Seasons and the ladies who lunched there and the chauffeured limo, she added, “I hate to tell you, but this is reality, honey.”
He nodded. “I know, I’ve been there.”
“You have?” She was astonished. “I thought you were the heir to a fortune, rich kid makes good and all that, empowering the family’s old millions and turning them into billions with your marketing genius.”
He grinned modestly. “It wasn’t quite like that.”
“No? Then tell me what it was like.”
“You first,” he said.
So she told him how she was Melba Eloise Merrydew of Merrydew Oaks, an old Georgia plantation house, with a mother who thought she was a modern-day Scarlett and a hard-drinking father who definitely was not Rhett.
“That lasted all of five years,” she informed Ed. “By then Daddy had lost all the family money, so Mommy took charge. She hocked the plantation, put Daddy into rehab, and moved us into a condo in Atlanta. She put me in a private school she couldn’t afford and, still acting the southern lady, got herself a job as a saleslady in Brown Jordans. Actually, she did quite well there. Unlike me, she always did have style. She ended up running the designer department. Quite a feather in her cap, she called it.
“Anyhow, somehow I got through school, worked as a waitress to pay my way through college. Dad never came home—I mean he quit rehab and just disappeared. We never heard from him again until we were notified by the police that he had died in a car wreck, out in Montana somewhere.
“Mom couldn’t imagine what that old southern gent was doing up in the wilds of Montana, but she wasn’t surprised to hear that there were two causes of the accident. One was his alcohol level—the other was the moose he hit.”
She took a sip of the wine margarita and made a wry little face. “I can’t imagine why I like this,” she complained.
“Nor can I,” he agreed, taking a sip. “So what happened to your mother?”
“Oh, she’s living in comfort, if not exactly splendor, in a retirement condo in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Playing bridge—she’s a killer at bridge—and having a wild social life. And though she’s never cooked in her life, she’s always e–mailing me old southern recipes. And I live on Power Bars and Diet Coke! She’s still playing the southern belle, though I guess it’s a bit tougher being a southern belle in a Chapel Hill, North Carolina condo than it was at Merrydew Oaks.”
She laughed, still thinking about her mother, and Ed said, “She’s quite a character.”
“She is, and I love her. And now it’s your turn, Mr. Vincent.”
“Mmm.” He turned his attention to the nachos and salsa. “Maybe later. First, I want you to look at this.”
Mel took the letter he handed her, scanning it quickly. It was the report from the P.I. saying that the laser had detected traces of bloodstains that had been cleaned up.
“So now you believe me,” Mel said triumphantly, glad that she hadn’t been dreaming after all. Though come to think of it, it might have been better for Ed if she had.
“I believed you before. This is evidence, though we still don’t know what happened to the body.”
“What do we do now?”
She was looking expectantly at him, as though he was sure to have all the answers. He hated to disillusion her. “You are the one who can identify the killer. I think you might be in danger.”
Mel gulped her margarita. “Me? What about you? He missed you once, he’s sure to be around for another try. Anyhow, who is he?” She glanced suspiciously at Ed from under her lashes; he hadn’t yet told her about his past and now she wondered. “Tell me why someone wants you dead.”
“They don’t. The P.I. believes it was just a robbery gone wrong. One robber killed the other and took off with the money. There’s a hundred thousand missing from the safe.”
“A hundred thousand!” Her eyes bugged and he laughed.
“When you’ve been as poor as I was, you kinda like to have a bit of chump change around. Just in case.”
“Chump change. Huh. The rest of us should be so lucky.”
“It wasn’t all luck,” he reminded her.
“I know, I