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“Look, I’m not really in the mood—”
“All right, all right. All I mean to say is, you and I have certain traits in common. Including, I think, a slightly suspicious nature.” He paused—for dramatic effect, I thought—and then said, “So I wonder if you’ve also wondered if Mother’s death was really an accident.”
Thank god I’d put my coffee aside; if I’d been drinking it, I would have done a spit take. I kept my tone neutral. “What do you mean?”
“I mean murder, Delphine. Money is one of the two biggest reasons in the world why people kill each other, and my mother, your grandmother, had a lot of it.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“What?”
“Why people kill each other.”
“Love,” he said, and chuckled. “But I don’t see that being the case here. So, there, I’ve laid my cards on the table. Well, most of them. I haven’t told you who I suspect.”
“I assume it’s me,” I said.
“Why’s that?” He sounded genuinely curious.
“Isn’t that what this is really about? You know she left me almost everything.”
“Yes,” Richard said. “I did hear about that. But only because Diana called me, ranting and raving about it. I take it she was unpleasantly surprised.”
I blinked. Something wasn’t right. I’d assumed Richard hadn’t come to the meeting yesterday because it was too far to fly, and that the lawyer would call him afterward. But—
“You already knew you weren’t getting anything,” I said.
“Bingo,” he said.
“How?”
“Oh, Mother wrote me out ages ago. Told me she was doing it, too. She said she wouldn’t leave me a dime, not when she knew I’d use it to fund a life of decadence and depravity.”
“She disinherited you because you’re an obnoxious drunk?” I said incredulously, and Richard said, “What?!” and then laughed for what seemed like forever and finally managed to choke out, “For god’s sake, you idiot child, I’mgay,” before erupting into a fresh round of hysterics.
For the next minute, I listened to Richard shrieking on the other end of the phone—at one point he was laughing so hard that he wasn’t actuallylaughinganymore, just making this high-pitchedeee-eee-eeesound like a squeaky dog toy—and wondered if I was the only onewho hadn’t guessed what seemed suddenly, painfully obvious. The thing was, Richard was so gifted at being an asshole that I’d never even bothered to wonder if there was something underneath, more ordinary and tragic, even pathetic. And the grudge he held against my grandmother wasn’t petty at all. He’d only been lashing out at the mother who refused to accept him.
“Jesus,” I said.
Richard had finally stopped laughing, at least enough to speak. “What?”
“But this means that Mimi was a, like—”
“A homophobe?” He sighed. “I forget sometimes how young you are. Mother was born in the 1920s. Of course she was a homophobe. But for whatever reason, she took it very, very personally when it turned out I preferred the company of men—although lord knows I tried to pretend otherwise.”
“Your wives,” I said. “Did they know?”
“Oh, I think Jillian has always suspected, but she’ll never ask. Too polite. Natalie left me for a younger man before she could figure it out. Francesca, I told. She said she didn’t care, but surprise, it turns out I did. It’s exhausting. Pretending.” His voice turned sly. “Of course, you’d know all about that.”
The words were out before I knew I was going to say them. “We’re getting married,” I said. “Adam and me.”
“Mazel tov. When?”
“I don’t know. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
“Lucky me,” Richard said, chuckling. “I’ve got to hand it to you, though. You played it awfully cool. Between you and your mother, you almost convinced me I was hallucinating all the sexual tension in the house.”
“Wait, what? What about my mother?”
