Nancy’s Theory of Style (46 page)

Viktor said, “Marie’s housekeeper can
watch. The girl is no problem.”

And that chilled
Nancy
. Because Eugenia was a problem. She was
willful and impetuous and mischievous and very vocal and exasperating, which is
exactly how she should have been. “Birdie, may I have a word.”

Birdie shrugged her elegant bony
shoulder and said to Viktor, “One moment.”

Nancy
pulled Birdie away. “I have a wonderful
idea. Why don’t I take care of Eugenia for you? All the time. Then you would be
free to come and go as you please”

Birdie laughed and now her laugh seemed
a tinny imitation of Eugenia’s pure silver joy. “I know it was a little naughty
of me to leave her with you, but there’s no need to be a martyr and take her
on.” She touched
Nancy
’s arm with a graceful,
jeweled hand and all
Nancy
could think of was that the hand was useless and unloving. “Let’s have some fun.
We’ll leave Marie’s housekeeper will babysit and we can go out.”
 

“I don’t want to leave Eugenia with
someone else, Birdie. I love her and I’d like you to sign over custody to me.”

For once, it was Birdie who looked
shocked. “You’re talking about my baby, Nanny.”

“I know our family prefers delusion, but
let’s be honest. You’re a terrible mother. In fact, you’re a terrible person. You
are the most shallow, self-centered, selfish person I’ve ever met and I speak
from a position of experience. Let me have her.”

Birdie’s green eyes narrowed. “Why
should I? What do I get out of it?”

“In non-tangible terms, you’ll know that
you’ve done the right thing for your daughter. In more concrete terms, you’ll
save yourself the cost of rearing a child, and you’ll be free to roam the
continents as you please,”
Nancy
said and thought, come at your enemy like a thunderbolt. “Can you really see
taking take a teenage girl along when you take trips with your lovers?”

Nancy
ignored her cousin’s scowl and took the
legal documents from her bag. “Review these with an attorney. They release
Eugenia into my custody so I can legally act as her guardian.”

Birdie turned to look at her daughter
clinging to Rick and then she looked at attractive Viktor and her new friends. She
said, “You’re drearier than I thought, Nanny, already giving up your freedom.”

Nancy
calmly waited, ready to change
strategies and then something incredible happened.

Her cousin flipped through documents and
signed the pages tagged with red stickers. Birdie handed them to
Nancy
and said, “Send
copies to my parents. I don’t know where I’ll be.”

Birdie went to Rick, who put her
daughter down. The girl clutched his leg. “My angel, your Auntie Nanny would
like you to live with her all the time. Would you like that?”

Eugenia nodded. “And Rick and
Blackbeard.”

“What?”

“Her kitten. Where is he?” Rick asked.

“That thing ruined one of my dresses. Gregor
left it in the garage with food and water. I’m sure it’s fine.”

Nancy
wanted to slap her cousin. “We’ll
follow you back to pick it up.”

“We’re going out.”

Gregor said, “The housekeeper will let
you in. She doesn’t speak English, but I’ll call and tell her you’re coming.”

Birdie looked at her daughter and said,
“Give Mama a kiss goodbye, angel.”

Eugenia looked at Nancy, who nodded, and
then the girl went to her mother and kissed her cheek before running back to
Rick.

“She’s not a very loving child,” Birdie
said and then smiled at Rick. “There’s no reason for you to be stuck with her,
too. Come out with us and I’ll make sure you have a good time.”

Nancy
put her arm in his and said, “Nice try,
Birdie, but I’ll run you through with a cutlass if you come near him.”

Birdie just laughed and went off with
her companions.
Nancy
had one more question to ask, though, so she followed and drew her aside.

“Birdie, who is Eugenia’s father?”

“You met him once, Nanny Girl.”

“I don’t want to play a guessing game
and you’ve had so many ‘bed friends.’ Which one?”

“Oh, darling, I’ll never tell, because
I’ve saving Eugenia from his family. You know how families can destroy a soul. So
you see I’m not such an awful person after all. Ciao.”

As Birdie walked away to the next
soiree, the next lover, the next adventure,
Nancy
stood still. She remembered that brilliant
day of the groundbreaking party, and Birdie arriving with the gift of perfume
and Leo. Junie and Bailey had been at the party, and so had Lizette and GP. Those
were the days when Todd always quoted Sun Tzu to her, until she knew the
lessons as well as she knew Tim Gunn’s rules for dressing.

Nancy
recalled hearing about Leo’s death and
making the decision to leave her house and Todd.

She began to see connections and
patterns, and she thought that if she could only take two steps back all the
disparate moments of her life would resolve into a picture, like a pointillist
painting.

An hour later Nancy, Rick, and Eugenia
had collected Blackbeard and were driving back to Château Winkles. The
suspicious car out front was finally gone.

“We’re home!” Eugenia shouted and
clapped her hands.

“We’re home!” Rick and Nancy said
together.

It was dinnertime, and Eugenia was
cranky with exhaustion, yet too excited to sleep. They ordered Chinese food and
invited Miss Winkles to have dinner with them.
Nancy
remembered the manila envelope and made
a show of handing it to Rick in front of their guest. “As you see, Miss
Winkles, I am fulfilling my obligation to deliver this. I will deliver the
other envelope tomorrow.”

Rick opened the envelope.

Miss Winkles looked at the little girl
who was on the floor playing with Blackbeard. “Eugenia, my apartment is too big
for me, and this apartment is too small for you. What should we do?”

Eugenia pursed her lips and then said,
“Trade.”

“What a good idea,” Miss Winkles said. “We
should trade, although I think I’ll leave my piano there so I can visit and
give you lessons.” She looked at Rick, who was holding a photo in his hands. “What
do you think?”

“Where did you get this?” he said stunned.
Nancy
took the
photo. There was Rick standing beside a young redheaded woman who looked like
Mrs. Bentley Jamieson Friendly. But it wasn’t Rick.

“Striking resemblance, don’t you think?”
Miss Winkles said. “His name was Bill, or Tim. Maybe Tom. One of those names. My
sister, Ferny, would know. She dated him until he caught a whiff of Abigail’s
fortune.”

“What happened to him?”
Nancy
asked.

“As I recall, Abigail Jamieson started
getting suspiciously plump. Her father was a nasty piece of work, almost as bad
as Dancing Dog Jamieson himself. Bill disappeared, and then Abby went abroad. Well,
that’s what girls of means did then…they went abroad and came back several
months later and were quickly married off,” she said with a laugh. “Nobody was
fooled. When Rick said his mother was adopted, I had my suspicions. It could be
a coincidence, because I don’t see much of Abigail’s features in him.”

Nancy
said, “When Mrs. Friendly’s butler saw
Rick, he said ‘I thought you were dead.’”

“We all heard stories. You should talk
to Abigail. She’ll be thrilled to learn she has a grandson, or maybe it’ll give
her a heart attack. Either way it’ll be entertaining.”

On Friday morning,
Nancy
let Eugenia stay in bed with her kitten
and began to deal with her problems. She called the gallery that had charged
her for the bowl and asked for a certificate of value so she could have her
personal insurance cover the cost. She told the manager, “If the valuation is
not legitimate, you will be hearing from my people.”

Nancy
contacted the leasing agent for the
waterfront warehouse to discuss the repair fees for the damage at the party.

“The new owner took care of it,” he said.
“That’s all I know.”

Now that
Nancy
had faced those problems, she had to
face Mrs. Friendly and apologize abjectly and try to make amends for the
disaster. Miss Winkles watched Eugenia while Nancy and Rick walked to the
Saloon.

As they went up the circular drive, Rick
said, “I don’t see any ninjas.”

“The whole point of ninjas is that you
don’t see them.”

Rick knocked on the front door and
Greene eventually answered it. “You again,” he said to Rick. “Go back to the
bottom of the sea where you belong.”

Green tottered off and they followed him
inside. “Mrs. Friendly,”
Nancy
called. They found her in the sunroom talking to GP.

“Hello, Mrs. Friendly,”
Nancy
said as GP jumped up and shouted,
“Princess!” He dashed across the room, hugging her tight, before she could
respond.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Friendly shoved her new
glasses back up her nose and said, “Holy crap!”

GP released
Nancy
and said, “I thought something had
happened to you. You didn’t answer my calls and I needed to explain…”

“It’s okay,”
Nancy
said. “Mrs. Friendly, I can’t apologize
enough---”

But Mrs. Friendly had walked over to
Rick. She put her hands on his cheeks and turned his head side to side as she
stared. “I couldn’t tell before my eye surgery, but I sure see it now. You look
exactly like someone I knew.”

He handed her a copy of the photograph. “Binky
Winkles gave this to me.”

“That sneaky little gossip,” Mrs. Friendly
said and then she looked at the photo. “That’s Billy Drexler and me! Oh, I
loved him! Had the face of an angel and the morals of a tom-cat.”

“Miss Winkles thought that perhaps you
and Bill…”
Nancy
said. “You see, Rick’s mother is adopted and she has no idea who her parents
are.”

Mrs. Friendly said to him, “I thought
your name was Derek and you were English.”

“Only temporarily.”

“Binky was right for once,” Mrs.
Friendly said. “I got packed off to a private clinic, drugged and when I woke
up, it was all over. Mr. Friendly couldn’t have children, and we tried to find
out what happened to the baby, but my father had the records destroyed. I never
even knew if I had a boy or a girl.”

The old woman looked again into Rick’s
face. “You’re not the first one to claim blood, so you’ll excuse me for not
getting sentimental just yet. We’ll save that until after I’ve got the results
of a DNA test. Now tell me about your mother.”

Nancy
said, “He will. But about the party,
that was my fault. I stipulated that I wanted an authentic atmosphere and I
want to do whatever I have to make up for that spectacle.”

“I’ve already explained that it was my
fault,” GP said. “The actors weren’t very experienced, and they thought that
real fights would be more authentic. I kept telling them I wanted authentic,
and they got into it.”

“Young man, you had the right intention,
but good intentions aren’t enough,” Mrs. Friendly said. She looked at Nancy and
said, “Little miss, you’re damn lucky that people thought escaping a waterfront
brawl and inferno was the most exciting thing they’d done in years.”

“They did?”

“Of course, the ninjas topped off their
evening, and Gigi Barton has been telling anyone who will listen that it was
part of a brilliant plan of yours,” Mrs. Friendly said. “All the board members
received handwritten notes from me saying how, hmmm…” Mrs. Greene reached for a
card on a small side table. “How thrillified I was with the party.”

“I didn’t know you knew that word!”
Nancy
said, surprised.

“I don’t,” Mrs. Friendly said. “I didn’t
write these notes and I don’t sign my name with little hearts over the i’s.”

Nancy and Rick exchanged a look and
Nancy
mouthed “Milagro!”
at him.

Mrs. Friendly raised her thin, penciled
eyebrows. “However, donations are rolling and everyone wants to reserve a table
for next year. I’m pretending like my anger was staged, and I suggest you do
the same thing.”

“I’d be happy to,”
Nancy
said. “But I don’t know how we’ll top
ninjas next year.”