Money To Burn by Katy Munger Page A

Most of them minded, but I didn’t. I always knew he was a snake when I picked him up. But he periodically suffered a slight sense of the guilts at his failure to maintain even a token semblance of monogamy when it came to our relationship. Probably his Catholic upbringing.
    “You’re not wearing thin,” I assured him. “Life is wearing thin. Maybe I need a vacation.”
    “What you need is a love affair,” he repeated. “Trust me on this one, Casey.”
    He hurried off to refuel a couple of out-of-control nurses, leaving me to my drink. If I didn’t snap out of it soon, I’d end up permanently parked at the bar, begging the piano man to play me a tune.
    “Buy you a drink?” a deep voice asked.
    I turned to find a burly man dressed in a nicely pressed golf shirt and khakis at my elbow. Jack’s friend from the other end of the bar.
    He had red hair.
    “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
    It had been years since I’d taken home a stranger. I made up my mind to get to know him fast.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I woke up alone the next day, my newfound red-headed friend having had the good taste to slip from my apartment before dawn. He didn’t leave a note. Either he’d figured out I wasn’t the mushy type, or I had snored.
    I decided to skip my morning weight-lifting session since I had burned a zillion calories the night before and was currently flexible enough to take on those ten-year-olds who keep winning Olympic gold medals. Instead, I sat at the kitchen table and looked out over my backyard as I slurped down my morning coffee. The air conditioning was cranked up to the max and the window fogged with the suffocating humidity of a Carolina July day.
    Speaking of suffocation, maybe Jack was right. Maybe I did need a love affair. But you couldn’t just order one up like a pizza from Domino’s. Me and last night’s redhead was a case in point. I had managed to scratch an itch, but that was about it. Odd how two people either click or they don’t.
    I didn’t want to dwell on my romantic drought, so I took the cold shower I probably should have taken the night before and thought about the Nash case.
    I needed to warn Lydia that I’d have to speak to her father. I could hide her involvement in hiring me, butJult I couldn’t ignore the inconsistencies I’d heard about Randolph Talbot and his relationship with Thomas Nash.
    I phoned Lydia at home, aware that, though she only lived a few miles from my apartment, our lives were a million miles apart.
    I was living in a three-room apartment perilously close to the wrong side of the tracks. Meanwhile, the Talbots lived on an enormous ten-acre compound smack in the middle of Durham’s oldest and most expensive neighborhood. A forbidding wrought-iron gate surrounded the entire lot, keeping the riffraff at bay. The acceptable practice was to grasp a metal bar in each hand and gaze longingly through the gate at the twin mansions built atop a central hill. They were matching pink stucco, sort of miniature San Simeons, and were lit with tiny white Christmas tree lights all year long to inspire awe in the simple folk. A carriage house that was about ten times bigger than my own apartment guarded the single entrance gate. There were various smaller cottages scattered around the estate, most of them well-hidden by the huge old oaks that dotted the rolling green lawn or the weeping willows that lined the large creek meandering across the Talbot grounds.
    I wasn’t sure if Lydia lived in one of the big houses or in one of the smaller cottages. Wherever she was, she had live-in help. A man with a faint accent and a formal manner answered the phone. I gave only my name; he recognized it and put me through without comment. I was vaguely relieved that she did not live alone. Until I found out who had killed Nash and why, there was a chance she could be in danger.
    “Did you find out something already?” she immediately asked, oozing the effortless morning energy of a person who lives a