TWENTY-ONETHE PLAIN-FACED, white-aproned maid guided me through the chateau to the upper-crust equivalent of a back porch. This was a basket-weave-walled patio with tinted plastic roofing, fuschias in hanging baskets, fernery in the corners, and a potted exotic plant nested under the glass-topped table where Nelda sat to breakfast.
The rich read the same newspapers we do, and Nelda sat scanning her copy of the front page between exhalations from an ebony and silver cigarette holder. She was a composition in graceful curves inside a morning negligee costume of a cobweb peignoir drawn over something gossamer.
She was scared all over again, right back into her vampire role. Maybe she hoped to seduce the homicide squad.
I greeted her. “You knew it was Dottie and Junior’s kid all the time …”
