Deadly Rich Read Online Free Page A

to go.”
    “I’m not through,” Oona said.
    “There isn’t time,” Leigh said. “We have an appointment at Marsh and Bonner’s.”
    Leigh handed Oona her jacket. “Come on, darling.”
    Oona waved her prescription at the assistant manager’s face like a straight-edged razor. “Get rid of him,” she warned, “or I will personally see to it that this restaurant is killed in the columns.”
    Out on the sidewalk Oona looked up at the sky. She seemed genuinely surprised to see the sun peeking through scudding clouds. She dipped a heavily braceleted arm into her bag and dragged out a pair of sunglasses. She spent much too long a moment getting them to stay on her nose. Tori hailed a cab and Leigh helped Oona into the rear seat.
    “Where to, ladies?” the driver said.
    “Marsh and Bonner’s,” Leigh said. “Fifty-seventh and Fifth.”
    The cab pulled into traffic.
    Leigh patted Oona’s hand. “You’ll be calm, won’t you, darling?”
    INSIDE MARSH AND BONNER’S with its three-story atrium, the air was cool and pleasantly perfumed. Well-dressed, well-mannered customers strolled the aisles, pausing to discuss scarves or cosmetics or gloves with well-dressed, well-mannered salespeople. A subdued murmur of civilized voices flowed across the gleaming display cases.
    Leigh and Tori guided Oona to the elevator.
    “I swear,” Oona said, “when you have murderers slicing radicchio at Archibald’s, you know these are the plague years.”
    “Mezzanine,” the elevator operator said.
    “What’s happening in this town?” Oona said. “Who’s minding the store? The PLO? Bishop Tutu? Somebody’s got to care!”
    “Right.” Tori glanced at Leigh.
    “Second floor,” the elevator operator said.
    “Excuse us,” Leigh said to a woman standing in the way. She and Tori shepherded Oona across the floor to the Ingrid Hansen Boutique.
    It was not so much a separate store as a stage set of a separate store, erected in the northwest corner of the floor. SCANDINAVIA’S LEADING DESIGN EDGE , a sign over the entrance announced.
    A slender, almost fleshless blond woman sailed across the boutique toward them. Leigh recognized the boutique proprietress from her photograph.
    “May I help you?”
    “We have an appointment,” Leigh said. “Baker and Sandberg.”
    The woman stood smiling with crisp formality. “I didn’t realize we’d said one-thirty on the phone.”
    “We’re a little early,” Leigh said. “By the way, do you know our friend, Oona Aldrich? Oona, this is Ingrid Hansen. She designed all these terrific clothes, and she was written up in last week’s New York magazine ‘Intelligencer.’”
    Ms. Hansen gave Oona a quick, appraising look. “Delighted. If Mrs. Aldrich is the friend you mentioned, I have something for her. Could you wait just a moment?”
    Ms. Hansen went to the other side of the boutique and began whispering to a sales assistant.
    “I can’t believe it,” Oona said. “I simply cannot believe it. Delancey is everywhere .”
    Leigh had never seen Oona this out of control so early in the day. “Jim Delancey’s not here.” She said it calmly, easily, as though it didn’t matter one way or another, as though they were idly discussing guests at a party. “Do you see him anywhere, Tori?”
    “He’s not here,” Tori said. “Really, Oona, he’s not.”
    “Not him .” Oona snapped a nod toward Ms. Hansen’s sales assistant. “I’m talking about his witch of a mother.”
    Leigh glanced again at the stiff, stout little woman. Except for the octagonal wire-rimmed glasses, she could see a certain broad resemblance to Xenia Delancey. The saleswoman had the same sort of uptilted, thimble-sized nose. She wore her gray hair wound into the same tight sort of gray nautilus coil. She even had the same way of listening with her head cocked to the left.
    What Leigh was not prepared for was the voice that came out of that thick little body, or its effect on her.
    “Right away, Ms. Hansen.