Nancy’s Theory of Style (42 page)

“Save your excuses,” Mrs. Friendly said.
“I’ll be damned if I’m paying one cent for this catastrophe and I’ll see to it
that you never even get near a party while I’m still alive. Now get out of my
sight and I’ll clean up your mess.”

“I can talk to the fire--”

“I said, get out now!”

As
Nancy
turned to leave, she saw Gigi Barton cozying up to a fire fighter, and Gigi
flashed an okay sign and a grin. How could anything be okay?

Although
Nancy
wanted to run away from the critical
stares of the guests, she walked with as much dignity as she could muster to
the staff trailer to get her things. She didn’t make eye contact with the coat
check girl who was changing out of her costume.

Nancy
’s purple handbag had fallen over and
when she picked it up, the empty vodka bottle rolled out. She retrieved it and
said to the coat check girl, “I’ll recycle it.” She took her phone from her
clipboard and tossed it into the bag with the empty bottle.

Nancy
walked out to her car, which was parked
on the far side of the lot near Aldo’s coffee shack. The rear tire had a
chrome-yellow boot on it.
Nancy
had a crazy urge to laugh. Todd really had learned from Sun Tzu and planned his
strategy to every detail. She felt a new admiration for him.

“
Nancy
!”
Sloane was coming through the aisle of cars. “Are you okay?”

“My car got booted.”

Sloane said. “Mrs. Friendly sent the
rest of us away and she’s sending for her staff to clean up. I’ll take you
home.”

Nancy
looked over the cars and saw Bailey
supporting the red-headed patroness as she talked to the fire chief. “Thanks,
Sloane. I’d appreciate it.”

Sloane’s older Volvo was nearby. She
moved aside toys and drawings so
Nancy
could sit on the front seat. When they were in the car and on the road, she
said, “Mrs. Friendly’s escort was the Ambassador of Lithuania. What happened,
Nancy
?”

“Me, that’s what happened.” She managed
a smile and said, “GP told me he was going to make the party authentic and I
didn’t pay any attention. Eugenia told me Derek is called Rick, and I didn’t
pay any attention.” She glanced at Sloane. “Derek’s real name is Rick and Todd
paid him to spy on me because Todd wants to break the pre-nup. Bailey was part
of it, too.”
 

“Why would Todd want to do that to you?”

“So he can use information make me stay
with him, or break the pre-nup so he could get to my money. He knows that my
family would want to avoid the scandal that I was cheating on him.”

“But you weren’t,
Nancy
.”

“Yes, I was, Sloane.”

They reached Chateau Winkles and
Nancy
parked in front.

“With Bailey?” Sloane asked.

“No, thank goodness for that. He’s been
trying to get me to into his bed. He almost did, too,” she said. “You know,
Sloane, you’ve been one of the few people I can count on. Not that I treated
you very well. I thought that you were just this mother.”

“Maybe I didn’t treat you so well either.
I should have told you about Bailey.”

“What do you mean?”

“He got Lewis into gambling. Then Bailey
convinced him to invest in ventures that sounded great. Lewis lost everything,
but Bailey always came out with a profit and he’d manage to lure Lewis into
another scheme.” Sloane shook her head. “Our credit was maxed out, my jewelry
disappeared, and then Lewis took off in the minivan and left me with two
toddlers and no car.”

“Oh, Sloane, I didn’t know it was that
bad.”

“When I went through Lewis’s files, I
found inconsistencies between his personal records of investments and financial
reports. I thought these must be mistakes,” Sloane said. “I still trusted
Bailey then, so I went to see him – he was living with a rich divorcee, and I
showed him what I had. He promised to help. Instead, he blocked my calls and
emails and moved.”

“It’s awful to be betrayed,”
Nancy
said, thinking of
how she and Todd had betrayed each other.

“I couldn’t believe it when I moved here
and saw that Bailey had established himself with a clean slate. I hoped he’d
changed. I was going to ask for you to talk to him, since he seemed to like
you, but I didn’t know if you’d believe me.”

“Bailey got Todd involved in a venture,
too, and Todd lost every cent he put in. Now I wonder,”
Nancy
said. “Give whatever you’ve got to me
and I’ll have my father look into it. I’ll talk to you in a few days.”

Nancy
hugged her friend and got out of the
car. All she wanted to do was crawl in bed next to Eugenia.

She took the elevator up, too tired to
think about toning her legs on the stairs.

Eva, the babysitter from Three Bridges,
met her at the door to her apartment and said, “Are you all right? The party
was on the news.”

“I’d rather not talk about it. How was
your evening? Did Eugenia behave?”
Nancy
walked into her apartment and went to her writing table. She pulled out a
drawer and counted bills to pay the babysitter for the entire night.

Eva put on a puffy jacket and said,
“She’s a great kid. Her mom came and picked her up about an hour ago.”

Fear crashed down on
Nancy
like an icy wave, dragging the sand
from beneath her feet, chilling her to the bone. “What? You let Eugenia go?”

“Roberta, is that her name? She said you
were expecting her. Mrs. Kanbar said that you were watching Eugenia
temporarily, and I tried calling you about forty minutes ago, but you didn’t
answer.”

“I was away from it then.”

“I figured you were busy when I heard
about the fire,” Eva said. “Eugenia was happy to see her mother, but she acted
up about the kitten, so they took it with them. Her mother’s boyfriend is
really handsome.”

“Yannis, a Greek man with a beard? Did
Roberta say where they were going?”

“His name was Viktor,” Eva said, looking
apologetic. “I hope that was okay. I checked Eugenia’s file before I came over
and you’d written down that her mother, her grandparents, and her aunt were
allowed to pick her up from Three Bridges.”

Nancy
remembered filling out the forms when
she was hoping that Birdie would come fetch her daughter. “Yes, I did.”

“Are you okay, Ms. Carrington-Chambers?”

Nancy
tried to smile. “Thank you, Eva. Goodnight.”

“Good night.”

Nancy
shut the front door and then went to
the laundry room and opened her bin of earthquakes supplies. She took out the
Altoids tin where she kept her emergency pharmaceuticals. She picked out two
Percocets, took them to the kitchen and downed them with a glass of wine.

She went to her bedroom turned on the
light of her closet. Eugenia’s nest of comforters and pillows was empty. The
beautiful leather tote was gone, but books and her stuffed parrot had been left
behind.
Nancy
picked up the red cape that Eugenia liked and held it to her face. The scent of
the child clung to the fabric.

Still holding it,
Nancy
crawled into bed and cried in an ugly,
primal way until the drugs seeped through her body, giving her a false sense of
hope. Then she fell asleep.

Chapter 22: The 360 Degree Mirror

Nancy
awoke feeling peaceful and rested. She
turned and reached for Eugenia, but the child wasn’t there, and
Nancy
was on the floor of
her closet.

Reality bitch-slapped her awake.

Birdie had kidnapped the pirate child.
Nancy
’s mother was an
alcoholic, and her father was a control-freak and serial adulterer. Bailey and
Junie had used her and could give her husband enough information to break the
pre-nup, if his spy hadn’t already provided it. If Todd decided to trap her in
their marriage, her parents would probably support him.

Because
Nancy
had approved the shenanigans at the
gala, the event insurance would be voided, and she would be responsible for the
damage to the warehouse.

Beautiful, fabulous Derek had never
existed, only some angry, deceitful man named Rick who’d had sex with her so that
he could betray her.

The prettiness of her life had been as
false a façade as the sets within the warehouse.

Nancy
finally had her epiphany: she couldn’t
control everything around her and create a perfectly chic Fancy Nancy-land.

She picked up her phone and saw that she
had 37 missed calls and 29 messages. None were from Birdie, and she deleted all
but the frantic messages from GP. The first said, “
Nancy
, I’m so very sorry. Call me, please.” The
second said, “Are you all right? I really talk to you about this. We can fix
it.” The third said, “I’m going to fix it,
Nancy
, I promise. I hope you’re all right,
but I understand if you don’t want to talk to me now.”

Dear, sweet GP. She’d deal with him
later.

Now
Nancy
called her Aunt Frilly. “Aunt Frilly,
I’ve got two important things to tell you. The first is that my mother’s
drinking herself to death and needs help. The second is that Birdie abducted
Eugenia last night.”

“
Nancy
,
you’re being dramatic,” her aunt said in the same voice that Hester always
said, lovely, lovely, lovely. “Your mother’s always liked a tipple to calm her
nerves. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“She hides vodka in her closet. She
passes out almost every afternoon. She’s not suffering from nerves. She’s
suffering because my father blatantly cheats on her. That’s why my sisters
moved away and never come home.”

Frilly was silent for so long that
Nancy
said, “Are you
still there?”

“I’m still here. Why can’t you watch
your mother, Nancy?”

“Because I’m going to hunt down Birdie
and save Eugenia and our cat. Do you know where they are?”

“I didn’t even know Birdie was back.” Aunt
Frilly sighed. “
Nancy
,
it will do Eugenia more harm than good to be tossed back and forth between you
and Birdie.”

“I know. That’s why I’m going to try to
get legal custody of her.”

Frilly was silent for a minute and then
she said, “You’ve always been my favorite,
Nancy
. Sissy’s coming down tomorrow. I’ll
have her pick up your mother and I’ll look for a facility here. If you think
it’s that serious.”

“It is. Please call me the instant you
hear anything about Birdie.”
Nancy
put the phone down and was trying to think of her next step when the intercom
buzzed and a man’s voice said, “Mrs. Chambers? Mrs. Chambers?”

Nancy
peaked out the front curtains and saw a
news van parked on the street. She didn’t answer the buzzer and in a minute
another car arrived. The buzzer sounded repeatedly, but she didn’t answer.

Her phone rang and the I.D. indicated
that it was her attorney so
Nancy
answered, “Hello.”

“
Nancy
,
on last night’s news, the reporter mentioned your name in connection to a fire
at a historical landmark,” Renee said.

 
“It was only a small fire at the party I
organized for the
Barbary Coast
fundraiser and
there’s a news van parked out front, but that’s the least of my worries. Todd
offered to hire an assistant for my business, but the man he placed here really
worked for a private investigator and was spying on me.”

Renee was silent for a moment and said,
“Were you discreet with this employee?”

“Actually, I told him that I’d had an
affair with a squeezel named Anthony Harper,”
Nancy
said. “Also, I had sex with the fake
employee and let’s hope he didn’t get hidden videos. Go ahead and run my
pre-nup through the shredder.”

“Good God,” Renee said. “Let’s not be
precipitous. We need to talk about this and strategize.”

“Todd has out-strategized me, Renee, and
I can’t talk right now because I have something more urgent. I need to get
custody of my cousin’s daughter. Can you draw up papers for Roberta Willow
Carrington to release her minor daughter, Eugenia Carrington, father unknown,
to my guardianship?”