The Golden Girl (2 page)

“Good,” she said aloud to herself, hoping the photographers would pull over. She sure as hell wouldn’t. And if she did, wasn’t stalking a crime?

Eventually, the photographers did pull over. Maddie guessed they felt they had enough pictures—and a hell of a chase story to regale the tabloids with.

She calmly pulled onto the street and cut down a side street—she didn’t even look at the sign. Then she got her bearings and made her way around the outskirts of the park to her apartment on Central Park West.

Maddie pulled into the underground garage. She climbed out and left the keys in the ignition.

“Hello, Eddie.” She smiled at the parking attendant.

“Hello, Ms. Pruitt,” Eddie said, his uniform crisp, his manner professional, as he held open her door and waited to drive the Jag to its assigned spot.

She nodded at him and took her purse from the passenger seat, grabbing her cell phone. “Oh…damn…um, I lost a hubcap. Can you call the dealer and arrange for a new one?”

“Sure thing.”

Maddie entered the building on the garage level, and pressed a button for the elevator. She could see security cameras watching her from a half-dozen angles. Security was one of her father’s pet peeves, among others. Pruitt Towers were not only impeccable—with marble floors and original paintings in the common areas—but they were the safest buildings in Manhattan.

When the brass elevator door opened, the elevator operator, Harry, gave a tip of his cap. She smiled at him, stepped into the elevator, and needed to say nothing as he pressed the button for the penthouse. Everyone—from the doormen to housekeeping—knew exactly which apartment belonged to Madison Taylor-Pruitt. The penthouse with the best view of the park.

She got off on her floor and walked to her apartment door, letting herself in and deactivating the alarm. Then she reset for “home,” meaning all doors and external windows were secure, but she could roam the apartment at will.

Maddie pressed a button on the wall, and with a nearly silent
whoosh,
all the panels of blinds ascended, revealing a bank of windows with the most incredible view of the park. She admired the twinkling skyline. Then she massaged her neck and slipped off her shoes. It had been a long day—and a long and strange night.

She walked in bare-stocking feet over to the telephone and dialed her father.

“Dad?”

“Maddie. You’re safe?”

“Other than being nearly driven off the road by paparazzi. What the hell is going on?”

“Have you turned on the television yet?”

“No.”

“You better sit down.”

“Dad…” He rarely patronized her, and she abhorred when he did. “Just tell me.”

“All right…. It’s Claire. She was found murdered tonight.”

“M
addie? Maddie? You still there?”

“Yeah…I’m here,” she whispered. She walked to the kitchen and turned on the lights. Custom cherrywood cabinets reflected the halogen lamps hanging from the ceiling. She stepped over to the sink—an immense double one carved from a single piece of granite. Taking a crystal glass from the cabinet, she turned on the tap fitted with a water filter and filled the glass with water.

“Maddie…the police will likely want to interview you tomorrow.”

She sipped the water, then stuck her fingers under the faucet, wet her hand and patted her head, feeling mildly dizzy.

“Me? Why?”

“You were her best friend.”

“Not in a while, Dad. We hadn’t spoken in months.” She didn’t need to add
thanks to you.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“No.” She wanted to add,
I’ll never be okay again.
“How was she…” Maddie couldn’t say the words.

“She was shot in a warehouse. The old abandoned one we were looking to buy for the condo project.”

“What was she doing there?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did she tell you she was going there?” Maddie snapped at her father.

“Is that an accusation?”

“No…” She softened a bit. “I just don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

Maddie heard his voice catch a bit, and she wanted to suggest that maybe she take a walk the five blocks to his apartment—a two-story penthouse world famous for its luxury. Then her anger got the best of her.

“I need to go.”

“You want me to come over?”

“No, Dad. In fact, right about now, you’re the last person I want to see.” She hung up the phone abruptly, her hands shaking slightly.

Maddie walked through the living room to her cavernous master bedroom. She’d furnished it with an immense four-poster antique bed, its headboard intricately carved sometime during the Victorian era. Egyptian-cotton sheets in a pristine ivory shade and modern touches in the room, including a haunting black-and-white photo by Diane Arbus and a painting by Julian Schnabel, made it seem very fresh, though. Maddie moved to an armoire in the corner of the room and opened the double doors, pulling out a drawer. There, nestled in among her silk camisoles, was a small wooden box. She took it out and sat down on her bed, opening the lid.

Her first instinct, all those months ago, had been to rip up her pictures and memories, to pretend she’d never known Claire. Now, her once–best friend murdered in cold blood, she was grateful she hadn’t. She pulled out a photo of the two of them, smiling, on a trip through Napa Valley wine country. They were on horseback—Maddie remembered Claire’s mount nearly bucked her off. Next was a photo of them in Paris, when Maddie’s mother had flown them there for a weekend of art and gourmet meals. It had been unseasonably cold, and Claire’s black hair framed her face in a classic Clara Bow bob. She looked like a 1930s movie star, with her Kewpie doll lips and big black eyes. But woe to anyone who doubted her ability in the courtroom. In the picture, Maddie stood next to Claire, her polar opposite in terms of looks. Both of them had on hats and scarves to ward off the chill. They had asked a handsome Frenchman to snap their photo, and he had captured them midlaugh.

Maddie stared at the photos. Claire had been so much a part of her life—her first friend at boarding school. After high school, they’d gone to Harvard together, roomed together, gotten an apartment together. She hadn’t imagined a time when they wouldn’t be together. But that was before the dinner nearly six months ago that changed her entire world….

“How’s your soufflé?” her father asked her.

“Excellent.”

“And yours, Claire?”

Claire nodded, but despite her friend’s famous sweet tooth, Maddie had noticed how she’d just picked at her dessert.

They were seated in the upstairs dining room of 412—an exclusive restaurant in Manhattan so pricey and discreet that it was simply known by the number on its door, and no other markings delineated it as a restaurant. Its number was unlisted. The upstairs dining room was for the clientele even an establishment like 412 distinguished as the most elite of the elite. Jack Pruitt and his daughter, Maddie, were regulars.

“Maddie,” her father began. “You know I would never hurt you for anything in the world.…” He hesitated and sipped at his Glenfiddich on the rocks. His sandy blond hair was streaked with an elegant silver, though it was still full and thick. His broad shoulders and wrinkleless skin made him appear ten or even twenty years younger. “But sometimes, just like in business, things happen. They’re not personal, but people do get hurt.”

Maddie felt the color drain from her face. Something was very wrong when Jack Pruitt, who prided himself on having the charm of a showman mixed with the coldness of a viper, began talking about feelings. It wasn’t the Pruitt style.

“So,” he continued, “there’s no way to say this gracefully. Claire and I have fallen in love.”

“What?” Maddie looked at Claire. “When? I mean…God…what? Claire, you’ve mentioned nothing to…” But Maddie’s question had stopped as the previous few months swirled around her. All Claire’s late nights with her father, ostensibly going over the latest legal filings. She’d joined Pruitt & Pruitt as in-house counsel, and Maddie had felt relieved at first that there was someone in the legal department she and her father could trust implicitly. Now she felt like a fool. Her supposed best friend had been sleeping with her father. It felt so sordid.

Maddie pulled her chair back from the table, as Claire, usually so eloquent, stammered, “Please, Maddie…we didn’t even realize it was happening at first. It started innocently, I swear to you.”

“Nothing,” Maddie whispered as she rose stiffly from the table, “is innocent. We’re all grown-ups, but don’t insult my intelligence. At some point during your affair, each of you had a time when you could have stopped and said that it wasn’t worth betraying me. Or you could have told me when it started, not hid it, lying to my face. But both of you carried on. For that, I can never forgive either of you.”

She gathered her purse and suit jacket and left the two of them in stunned silence.

Maddie shut her eyes at the memories. That Monday, at the office, Claire had desperately tried to see her. She’d dropped by Maddie’s office, her dark eyes welling slightly when she looked at Maddie’s desk and saw that all the photo frames of the two of them—and Maddie’s father—had been put away. Maddie had cut her friend from her life. Her father, she had to deal with professionally. But even that relationship had grown chillier. Of course, the ever-confident swagger of Jack Pruitt never faltered—and he never apologized or raised the issue with his daughter again. He and Claire became a visible couple, and all of the city—especially the gossip columnists—had buzzed. Had the beautiful corporate attorney, decades his junior, finally snagged the most eligible bachelor in New York? Could Maddie’s closest confidante end up her stepmother?

Maddie winced at the memories and rose from her bed and went to the bedroom window, looking out on Manhattan, the city whose skyline she was helping to shape with her real-estate ventures. The waterfront warehouse where her father said Claire was killed was in New Jersey—and it offered a spectacular view of Manhattan across the waters of the Hudson River. Maddie had been bidding against Ryan Greene, her real-estate nemesis and flirting friend, for the land. But there was no reason for Claire to have been there. In fact, aside from Madison and Jack Pruitt, few ever knew for sure of the hush-hush dealings of Pruitt & Pruitt’s real-estate division. They were secretive because as soon as word got out as to what they were bidding on, competitors rushed to vie for the same building or land. But whoever had murdered Claire knew about the warehouse—and Claire knew about it, albeit without her needing to visit it.

Maddie puzzled over this. Who would have suggested meeting Claire there? Who did Claire trust enough to meet in an abandoned warehouse? Though Maddie thought her father was capable of many things, murder wasn’t one of them. But she knew that wouldn’t stop him from being suspect number one when the police looked into the slaying of the beautiful Claire Shipley, his much-younger lover.

“M
adison, darling?”

“Yes?” Maddie said into her private cell phone and sipped her coffee. Her voice was raspy from lack of sleep.

“Renee.”

“Hi, Renee…” Madison said a bit unsteadily. Renee had recruited her into the prestigious Gotham Roses, appealing to her sense of philanthropy. The Pruitt Family Trust was known for doling out millions of dollars in charity each year—and Madison was instrumental in choosing the charities. But Gotham Roses was more personal—a chance to actually go out and do something for the charity of her choice. Nonetheless, she and Renee were acquaintances only. And now, Madison guessed that she quite possibly was about to be kicked out of the Gotham Roses for dragging their name through the mud. Already the front pages of the two major New York daily papers were covering the murder—and her father’s affair with her former best friend—in gory detail.

“I’m so, so sorry to read of your friend’s murder.”

“Thank you,” Madison murmured.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No. I’m skipping the office today and working from my home—the better to avoid the phalanx of reporters outside my place. Two nearly ran me off the road last night.”

“They can be awful…. I felt like they were a school of sharks encircling me during Preston’s trial six years ago,” Renee said sympathetically, referring to her husband who Renee always maintained had been framed for financial misdealings at his family’s investment company. “Do you think you can slip away, though?”

Here it comes,
Madison thought. “Sure, Renee.”

“Wonderful. I’ll expect you for tea then, whenever you can get here.”

Madison hung up. She had told her housekeeper, who usually came twice a week, to stay home. A pot of coffee sat on the corner of her desk, and Maddie had been drinking cup after cup of the French roast. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night, tossing and turning and sighing. She wasn’t the crying sort—she had been raised to be coolheaded. But her heart ached.

Maddie rose from her desk and stretched. She hadn’t needed to dress in her usual office attire. She most often favored Chanel suits, or black classic suits from other designers, with silk blouses—always with feminine details, whether that meant a sexier cut, or unusual buttons, or French cuffs. She liked heels that raised her from her usual five foot seven to close to five foot eleven. She mused that if you wanted to play tough in New York City real estate with the big boys, you had better be able to look them in the eye.

“Casual Friday”—and today was Friday—meant nothing to Madison. She had power lunches and meetings every single day, and she never wanted to look less than her professional best. But today, working from home, she wore her typical weekend attire—Donna Karan—who had once espoused that one of the most essential wardrobe pieces was the simple black bodysuit. Maddie wore a black Karan bodysuit, dark blue jeans, loafers and a simple black sweater. For color, she wore a necklace with a large amethyst—her birthstone.

Sighing, Madison looked at her watch. It was two. She dreaded seeing Renee, expecting to be “called on the carpet.” The Gotham Roses were supposed to represent the stars of philanthropy. White-collar crime was one thing. Murder another. But Maddie felt it best to get it over with. She was practical that way. She never felt it was worth putting off the inevitable. The police were scheduled to interview her at six that evening, which gave her plenty of time to get to the Gotham Roses Club on the Upper East Side, at Sixty-eighth between Park and Madison, and back again.

She called down to the garage and told them to have her limo and driver ready. With its black-tinted windows, Maddie knew the photographers clustered outside would snap away, but she would be safely ensconced from their sight inside.

She took another gulp of coffee, left her office, grabbed her purse from the dining-room table, set the alarm code at the door and descended in the elevator to the basement.

Her limo was waiting, and her driver, Charlie, gave her a small smile, worry etched on his face. He had been her personal driver since her parents divorced when she was twelve. Charlie was the one to ferry her between the warring Jack Pruitt and Chantal Taylor, taking her from one penthouse to the other across Central Park, her beloved cat—and goldfish, Sam—in tow. Charlie was a former marine, who’d done a couple of tours in Vietnam. When her father hired him, Charlie had been putting his life back together again after his wife left him, starting with quitting drinking. He was older now, his hair streaked with gray. But Maddie knew, gray hair and bum right knee aside, he was loyal enough to do anything to keep her safe. And he was equally loyal to Jack Pruitt, who gave him a chance when no one else had.

Charlie held open the door for her, and she slid into the back, the leather seats smooth against her touch. She smiled. Next to her usual seat in the back was a copy of the latest issue of
Forbes.
He knew her so well. Usually, he’d also have a copy of the morning’s
New York Reporter,
opened to the “In the Know with Rubi Cho” column. Charlie knew her newspaper reading at the office was limited to the
Times
and the
Wall Street Journal,
but he and Maddie would chuckle over the innuendos and blind items about people they knew in Rubi’s column. Today, no
Reporter
waited for her, because, she was sure, the murder was on page one and would fill the gossip columns for weeks. He would instinctively protect her from that.

“I’m going to the Gotham Roses Club, Charlie,” she said when he got behind the wheel. “Just wait for me when we get there. I shouldn’t be all that long, and then I have to get back here…the police are coming to interview me about Claire.”

“I’m really sorry, Miss Madison.”

“Me, too, Charlie. Me, too.”

She settled back into the plush seat and shut her eyes, actually dozing for a few minutes on the way to the club. She felt the car stop and opened her eyes.

The Gotham Roses Club was in a beautiful brownstone with a white facade, wrought-iron gate, and a feel about it that said old-money establishment, gentility, quiet wealth. She loved the building—had since the first time she laid eyes on it a year before.

While she and her father prided themselves on some of the most spectacular high-rises and lofts in New York, she did love the feeling of the old brownstones near embassy row, an area of New York where many consulates and embassies quietly maintained their headquarters. The streets were quieter, tree-lined, and seemed from another time.

Charlie got out and held open the door for her. She patted his arm and smiled at him as she got out, reassuring him she’d be okay. She went to the gate and pressed a buzzer. When she gave her name, she was buzzed in immediately after looking up at the security camera.

Entering the club made the bustle of New York seem even more distant than the tree-lined street on the Upper East Side had. In the immense entrance hall, Debussy was piped in through hidden speakers, and immediately Maddie felt a tiny bit of tension leave her shoulders. The floors were polished parquet in an intricate pattern, the workmanship definitely from the Roaring Twenties. A grand staircase swept up to the second floor, curving, with a carved banister in rosewood. Curtains covered the windows and puddled on the floor, creating an ambience that was elegant yet relaxed, with sunlight streaming through their filmy whiteness. A fireplace huge enough to stand inside took up a portion of the wall to the left, and as always in the fall, a toasty fire glowed.

Olivia Hayworth, Renee’s personal secretary, greeted her warmly, kissing her on each cheek. “So glad you could make the trip in these circumstances, Madison. Please let me know if there’s anything we can do. We’ve sent over flowers to the funeral home, and the Shipley family listed a charity—”

“Yes, they give a great deal to the Children’s Museum in Philadelphia. Claire had a niece who had leukemia—since recovered. The museum was Amy’s favorite place during treatment and afterward.”

“Well, we’ve sent a sizable donation, in the Club’s name.”

“Thank you, truly. That’s very thoughtful. I’ll let my father know. I’m sure he’ll appreciate your gesture.”

“Renee’s waiting for you in the sunroom. Tea will be served in just a few minutes now that you’re here.”

Madison nodded and made her way down the hallway to the sunroom in the back of the brownstone. The French doors were open and there sat Renee Dalton-Sinclair, her auburn hair in an elegant bun, and dressed to perfection in an Oscar de la Renta suit. She rose and extended her hand. Though Madison knew she was in her forties, her beauty was timeless in a Grace Kelly sort of way.

“Hello, Madison. Thank you so much for coming.” Renee leaned forward and kissed Madison’s cheek as the two women clasped hands.

“Good to see you.”

“Again, I am so sorry…terrible, terrible crime.”

Madison nodded. It was difficult accepting condolences when she knew that as much as Claire had hurt her, she had wounded Claire in return by refusing to forgive her.

“Sit down. How are you feeling?”

Madison was unused to making more than small talk with Renee, but she was also weary. She opened up a bit.

“To be honest…awful. I haven’t slept.” Madison ran her fingers through her long golden-blond hair. “And…Claire and I had a falling-out over her relationship with my father. They had hidden it for months, and…well, it was hard to accept. So I feel terrible that she’s gone and things hadn’t been right between us.”

Renee nodded, her royal-blue eyes conveying empathy.

“Anyway,” Madison said, waving a hand, “the Pruitts are nothing if not tough. It’s just going to be rough going for a little while.”

Renee pursed her lips and clasped her hands together. She gave a nearly imperceptible nod and one of her staff wheeled in a tea cart with a beautiful bone china tea set on it. Madison was always amazed at how Renee’s crew forgot nothing. There were two hundred members of the Gotham Roses, but Maddie assumed the staff kept a catalog of each member’s likes and dislikes, because without asking, she got a cup of Earl Grey tea with lemon, no sugar, no cream—exactly as she liked it. The woman also handed her a plate with two scones on it, and raspberry jam as opposed to strawberry—also her preference.

After the woman had served Renee, she retreated from the sunroom, shutting the French doors behind her.

“Madison, perhaps you’re wondering why I’ve brought you here in the midst of your crisis.”

Madison nodded, ready for the worst.

“Well, the police are making vague references to ‘persons of interest.’ Of course, your father heads that list.”

“I know,” Madison said softly.

“Well…I consider myself an excellent judge of character. If I wasn’t, I couldn’t have created this charitable organization. In the year you’ve been a Gotham Rose, you’ve always struck me as a bit aloof, a shrewd negotiator. Cautious, perhaps, in your personal life. You stay out of the headlines—except when you think it counts, namely well-executed business deals. You are absolutely driven, the kind of person who thrives on putting in a hundred and fifty percent and the thrill of the deal.”

“I think that’s a fair assessment.”

“And my guess is being the by-product of the most famous divorce in New York history is part of that. At twelve, your life was an open book, wasn’t it? That’s why you guard your privacy.”

Maddie sighed. “They fought over every detail. My mother had to have a private chef shuttle between my father’s household and mine so that she could control what I ate—macrobiotic. When I got to college, I had my first taste of caffeine and loved it.” She smiled at the memory, but then shook her head. “I had matching wardrobes at her apartment and his. My father was required to send me on vacations tallying no less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year. I had to have two nannies at each home—a morning nanny, who also got me from school and oversaw homework—and a night nanny. It was insane. I was branded the Poor Little Rich Girl. They used to snap pictures of me getting out of my limo at school, with the headline Hundred-Million-Dollar Baby.”

Renee nodded. “Then there was that brilliant IQ of yours. Skipping grades. Private tutors to challenge you. Fluent in three languages. And finally, there are the things no one knows…like your training.”

Maddie looked at Renee, puzzled. “My training?”

Renee smiled enigmatically. “You can fire a .44 better than an FBI sharpshooter. And I believe you know the correct technique to break a man’s nose—or even kill him—with just the right palm-to-face blow.”

“I don’t understand…that stuff isn’t anything I would ever discuss with anyone. No one knows outside my father and the men he had train me.”

“I know. And why did he train you?”

“Well,” Maddie said coolly, “you seem to know so much about me, why don’t
you
tell me?”

“Trust me in that this all will make sense in a few minutes. From what I understand, your father and his brother Bing were actually two of three brothers. And the middle brother, William, was kidnapped and died in a botched rescue attempt. Though that was covered up by the family so that their failed security wouldn’t seem like an invitation to every kidnapper in the world back then to try again.”

Maddie stared incredulously. “Yes, though I’m…I don’t know what to say. Yes, that’s true. Understandably, my father has a security obsession. He wanted me to be safe, but then he knew that even a personal-security detail could have failings—namely, traitors. So he wanted me to be able to defend myself. It might seem a bit extreme, but I was trained by former Black Ops. Two of them who own a private security firm…Look, Renee, what is all this about?”

“It’s about me wanting to know what makes Madison Taylor-Pruitt tick. Madison, do you believe your father had nothing to do with Claire’s death?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then why was she shot at a property your father was negotiating for?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is I want the killer or killers brought to justice soon, because she was my friend, and because this kind of publicity Pruitt & Pruitt can do without.”