Deadly Rich by Edward Stewart Page A

quickly through the dining room, where sun touched mahogany chairs and table with streaks of rose.
    Just inside the swinging pantry door, on the counter beneath the cabinets of Wedgwood and Lowestoft dinner settings, the maid had left her copy of that day’s New York Tribune.
    Leigh snatched it up.
    There was an article on the killing, and Leigh was surprised to see her own photograph, captioned, FRIEND OF VICTIM . It was a publicity shot, and it struck her as glossy and false. Next to it was a photograph of Vincent Cardozo, captioned IN CHARGE . He had a dark face, made darker by serious eyes and heavy eyebrows and a mustache.
    There was no photograph of Oona.
    “Dizey’s Dish” was located, as always, on page ten.
The loathsome preppie Jim Delancey who less than four short years ago treated the innocent body of a young girl with a brutality you would hesitate to show a wad of pizza dough, is back on the streets, and the morbidly curious and strong of stomach can catch his act—as a salad chef at Archibald’s.
    And how did this sickening turn of events come about?
    Because under pressure from a certain highly placed and usually more responsible citizen, the parole board voted early freedom to this killer.
    And to what secure facility did they entrust this menace?
    Why, to his family. Which is to say, to the Marsh and Bonner’s saleswoman who somehow, with or without the help of her ex-husband the railway switchman, managed to come up with the fees to pay for the defense that so slandered the memory of an angel and destroyed the marriage of Leigh Baker, one of the finest and most beloved actresses this world knows.
    The paper slid from Leigh’s hand to the counter. The image of her dead daughter rose up in her brain. For a moment she could not master her thoughts. They were like a knife turning in a raw wound.
    Back in her bedroom she lifted the phone receiver and punched out Dizey. Duke’s number.
    “Yeah?” Dizey’s voice came on the line—bright and brash as a Texas fanfare.
    “Dizey, it’s Leigh.”
    “Just let me get rid of this jerk on the other line.” There was a silence and then a click and then Dizey was back. “Did you like the plug I gave you in the column?”
    “Dizey, who got Delancey out of prison?”
    Dizey didn’t answer.
    “Come on, Dizey, the parole board didn’t rise up in one body and say the Holy Ghost has commanded us to free Jim Delancey.”
    “I wouldn’t know. I’m not on the parole board.”
    “Please don’t give me that.”
    “Would you rather I say that as a journalist I don’t reveal sources? Okay—I’m a journalist and I don’t reveal sources.”
    “If that barbarian had been in prison where he belonged, I hope you realize Oona would be alive today.”
    “If you know that for a fact, you’ve got a better Ouija board than I do.”
    “I know it for a fact and so do you.”
    “Listen, Leigh, I did you a favor today, and why don’t you do me one and say good-bye right now, and we’ll forget this conversation ever happened.”
    “ DIZEY DUKE IS THE prima donna assoluta of foul temper.” Dick Braidy was all forgiveness and smiles. “All you can do when she gets that way is run for cover.”
    Leigh knew he didn’t mean a word of it, any more than she’d really meant it when she’d blown up at him on the phone. He was only saying what he thought she needed to hear. She appreciated the kindness, but he was missing her point. “It’s not the argument that upsets me.”
    “Of course it upsets you,” Dick Braidy said. “You never hang up on me and you never tell me to go to hell if you’re not deeply upset.”
    They were sitting in the chintz-filled living room of Dick Braidy’s midtown penthouse. A milky light spilled through the glass wall that separated them from the trellised terrace.
    “So please,” Dick Braidy said, “please clarify for me. How did one little phone call with Dizey manage to work you into such a state? Honey, under all that glamour,