Money To Burn by Katy Munger Read Free Book Online Page A

beginning,” I suggested. I could tell she was wealthy, and rich people who have inherited their bucks are different from us mere mortals in at least one important respect—time is not money, it’s theirs to spend as they like.
    “I need a drink,” she said unexpectedly. musexpecte”I’ve been trying not to give in to the urge, but I need a drink if I’m going to get into it.”
    “No problem.” I slid open one of my lower drawers and produced the bottle of bourbon that I keep hidden behind my box of tampons—one of the few items in my desk that Bobby D. refuses to touch. “Will this do?” I asked, displaying the label. “I keep it for emergencies.” Which was true. Just the smell of bourbon can make me gag, but sometimes it was useful with hysterical clients. I had wavered between the more traditional private-eye inspired bottle of scotch, but given that my clients were almost universally southern, bourbon won out in the end. At least it was a decent brand. “Wild Turkey okay?”
    “I’d drink Sterno right now,” she answered. She winced as she realized the irony of her remark, and I poured her a paper cup full of the hard stuff before she started blubbering on me again. She drained it in one gulp, gave a long shudder, then composed herself to begin.
    “I called Mr. Pope a number of times after the fire,” she said in a soft voice tinged by a cultivated drawl. “I found out his name from some, well, let’s just say some ‘connections.’ I guess I got on his nerves with all my questions, but when he figured out who I was, he didn’t want to make me mad. So he suggested I call you for help.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “So, who are you,” I asked, “that arson investigators like Maynard Pope tremble at the very sound of your voice?”
    She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “Lydia Talbot. My father is Randolph Talbot.”
    “Oh,” I said, immediately tabulating the implications of that simple remark. Randolph Talbot was the chairman of Teer & Talbot Tobacco, my dead client’s former employer. Randolph Talbot was also head of Durham’s wealthiest family. In fact, the Talbots were probably close to being the top dogs in both Carolinas, with more bucks than Marlin Perkins had on his walls and more social influence than the president of the local junior league.
    Even the most out-of-it townies knew their story. Rumor had it that a Talbot from Virginia had rolled into North Carolina after the Civil War searching for a way to improve his family’s fallen fortunes. He’d founded T&T Tobacco in Durham with the backing of a friend named Eustace Teer. Within two generations, the Teer seed died out thanks to debauchery and rumored syphilis, but the Talbot family tree took firm root and, eventually, took over the company. One hundred and thirty years later, T&T had made Randolph Talbot and his relatives wealthy beyond expectation. The mere mention of their name could make bankers salivate and caterers faint with joy. If Thomas Nash really had been engaged to the young woman sitting before me, she may well have been the reason why he was so blissfully unconcerned about current profits. He’d be set for life once he married her.
    Of course, now he never would, would he?
    “When I first saw you at the fire,” Lydia Talbot was confessing to me tearfully, “I knew you weren’t with the cops or fire department. And I could tell you were upset.
    So I thought maybe you and Thomas…” Her voice trailed off.
    “You thought I was having an affair with him?” I asked incredulously. “That doesn’t say much about the level of trust between the two of you.”
    Her shoulders slumped. “You don’t understand,” she said. “We were engaged and he kept saying he was happy, but he always seemed so… distracted. Distant. He was even passive about our wedding plans. He went along with everything I suggested. I guess I thought maybe it was because he had been seeing someone else and that you were