Rich Bitch: Everything's Going to the Dogs by Nancy Warren Page A

reunion,” Jonathon drawled, “what’s up?”
    “It’s Mimi.” The dog, who’d jumped on Sophie’s lap the minute she sat down, raised her head when she heard her name. “I was wondering if you’d take her while Sophie and I go away for a few days.”
    Esme put her glass down with a decided snap. “You’re sleeping with the housekeeper? Oh, Vince.”
    “
Salope
,” Sophie whispered into Mimi’s ear, and she could have sworn Mimi nodded agreement. Before Vince called his cousin something worse in her own language, which she could see he was about to do, Sophie spoke up. “I’m not the housekeeper. I’m Mimi’s nanny.”
    The superior smirk the woman sent her had her gritting her teeth. “Sure, you are.”
    She rose, knowing they had to get this horror show moving. It was no longer herself she was worried about blowing the operation, but Vince. He looked as if he wanted to toss both of his cousins out. And from the look on his face, he’d send them through the seventeenth-floor window.
    While Vince and his cousins worked out arrangements for the supposed dog-sitting assignment, she
 played her part in the kitchen. “Vince,” she called out. “What have you done with my tarragon?”
    “Is that a spice?”
    “
Bien sur
.”
    “I put it on the top shelf in the cupboard beside the oven. It’s not like you ever need them.”
    “I do,” she snapped. “I like flavor in my food.” She dragged a kitchen chair to the cupboard in question and climbed onto it, revealing the maximum leg possible knowing that Jonathon, at least, would be watching. She retrieved the spice and then reached behind it. “Oh,” she said. “What’s this, Vince?”
    “Hmm? Don’t know. Never seen it.” He was lying because he’d fed the poor Doberman from the tin she was now holding not three days ago.
    She eased open the lid, careful not to look into the living area. “
Imbecile,
” she said. “It is cookies. Dog cookies.”
    “Oh, probably from that stuff of Mimi’s. There was so much of that junk I put it away and probably forgot about it.”
    She clambered down and placed the tin on the counter, then added the tarragon to her
Minestrone de Coques et Saint-Jaques
.
    They managed to get through the lunch with more cordiality, and she couldn’t help but notice her “discovery” had caused Esme and Jonathon to drop the hostility. While they professed themselves delighted to dog sit Mimi for a few days, Sophie noticed how often Jonathon’s eyes strayed to the kitchen counter where she’d so casually left the tin with the cute hand-painted poodle design.
    Vince had assured her his cousins wouldn’t put off their murderous intent until they were dog sitting Mimi because, if she died mysteriously under their care, it would be too obvious they’d killed her.
    A private investigator friend of Vince’s had arranged for the original biscuits to be tested, and they were, as Vince had suspected, laced with poison. The same poison that nearly killed Sir Galahad. But there was no proof that Esme and Jonathon were to blame. At least, not yet.
    She only hoped the trap they were setting caught the two thoroughly unlikable cousins.
    After they’d finished eating, Sophie said, “I’ll put coffee on.” She was a little nervous now, since the next part of their plan involved getting themselves out of the main rooms without causing suspicion. It was the weakest part of their strategy as well as the most important.
    She was about to deliver her oft-rehearsed line about running down to the corner store to get the coffee she’d supposedly run out of. When she reached the main entrance she’d have the doorman buzz Vince and tell him to come down and bring her some money. She had to play a spoilt princess and refuse to come back up. Neither of them liked the idea of leaving Mimi alone in the apartment with the cousins, though.
    She took time to arrange cups and fiddle with cream and sugar, putting off the moment she’d pretend