“‘I feel pretty, oh so pretty,’” Coco sang softly as he looked in the mirror, aware of the dead woman in a black nightgown hanging by her neck from the chandelier behind him but much more focused on assessing the new outfit.
The tangerine linen skirt hugged his hips sublimely. The matching jockey coat was snug through the shoulders, but workable. The Dries van Noten high-heeled sling-backs were a bit toe-crunching. The Carolina Herrera silk taffeta blouse was simply remarkable. And the pearl earrings and choker? Just the right air of sophistication.
All he needed now was the right do.
Coco reached into the box and came up with a lush, shoulder-length, radiant amber wig. It was old, early 1970s, if he remembered correctly. His mother would have known the exact date, of course, but no matter. Once settled on the two-sided tape with the last strands of hair combed into place, the wig made Coco look like another person altogether.
Mysterious. Sexy. Alluring. Unreachable.
“I name you Tangerine Dream, Queen of the Garden Party,” Coco cooed to the woman staring back at him. “A vision of…”
He turned and looked at the petite dead woman dangling by a drapery cord from the chandelier. “Ruth? What would you say? I’m thinking a cross between Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights and Ginger on Gilligan’s Island—the haircut, anyway. Am I right, or am I just a foolish little girl?”
Coco giggled ever so softly before picking up the Prada shopping bag and other goodies pilfered from Ruth’s collection. He started to leave the master suite, then paused to listen. Though he knew that the staff had been given the day off and that Ruth’s husband, Dr. Stanley Abrams, aka “the Boob King of West Palm,” was in Zurich attending a medical symposium, it still paid to be careful.
Sure of himself now, Coco pushed on down a gallery rich with artwork, although the only piece he stopped to look at was an oil painting of the deceased. There you are, he thought, studying Ruth’s beauty. Caught at the moment of your ripeness, my dear, a gift to the universe.
Ruth and Stanley’s home was enormous and entirely too modern for Coco’s taste. But then again, what would you expect from the house that fake tits built? There was a great deal to be said for classic understatement, he believed.
As his mother liked to say: When it comes to your art, Coco, and fashion is art, take your motif to the limit and then back off several degrees.
Coco walked through a kitchen big enough to host an episode of Iron Chef and went down a hallway to a steel door. He checked the security system, got a white dust cloth from his bag, and covered his fingers with it before punching in the code. Five seconds later, he shut the garage door and waited for the electronic voice to tell him the system was armed.
The garage had four bays. The near one was empty. The second held Ruth’s Mercedes, and the third her husband’s Maserati. Coco’s beloved Aston Martin occupied the fourth bay. But before going to it, he reached into the Mercedes and removed the garage-door remote.
He backed the Aston out onto a colored concrete area, exited the car, pressed the remote, then wiped it down. When the garage door started to lower, he lobbed it inside, satisfied when it skittered to a halt a few feet from the Mercedes.
Someone intent on suicide would not bother to pick that up, would she? Coco was confident this was the case. He drove out through the security gates of Ruth and Stanley Abrams’s massive waterfront estate. Then he realized that the ladies of Palm Beach would already be gathering for cocktails. Maybe he’d go stroll by Oli’s Fashion Cuisine.
Would anyone recognize him at Oli’s? He was thrilled at his audacity, his taste for high-stakes games.
Let’s do it, girlfriend. Let’s really shake it up.
Ten minutes later, Coco parked the Aston Martin a few blocks away from his target zone. The vintage sports car was a risk, he knew. But he adored it, so it often caused him to act impulsively, demanding his attention when the Lexus would have done just fine.
Next time you’ll stay home, Coco thought and put on a pair of retro white-and-oval-framed sunglasses. He set off up the sidewalk, walking the way his mother had taught him, with his shoulders back, his head high, and his hips swaying like a pendulum.
The first man he encountered was a jogger in his fifties. Coco could feel his degenerate eyes looking over the Tangerine Dream. The second man, a Euro in yachting garb, dropped his sunglasses to gape openly.
That’s it, girl, Coco thought, putting just a little more sway in the booty for the Euro who’d no doubt turned to watch after the dream. Ahead, the yellow tables outside Oli’s were already filled with a stylish happy-hour crowd.
He took a breath, thought: Mysterious, now. Sexy. Alluring. Unobtainable.
That’s it, Coco. You’ve got it all.
Now flaunt it all.
He made his walk even more provocative, swaying his hips back and forth.
Coco raised his chin a degree as he passed the restaurant, ignoring the scene but aware of patrons twisting to look after him. He almost laughed to cause so much mistaken lust and envy.
Chapter
14
Starksville, North Carolina
Though everyone had heard the judge’s order loud and clear, it was well into the afternoon before two deputies brought my cousin, wearing leg shackles and handcuffs locked to a leather belt around his waist, into an interrogation room. Even through the bruises and swelling, I could see Stefan Tate took after our mothers’ side of the family. He was in his early thirties, tall and heavy-boned like me and like Damon. And we all had the same jawline.