Too Much Money: A Novel by Dominick Dunne

Author:Dominick Dunne
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Reading list I, Fiction
ISBN: 0345464109
Publisher: Random House LLC
Published: 2009-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

ADDISON KENT MADE A FATAL ERROR WHEN HE high-hatted Brucie Random in his very chic flower shop in the Rhinelander Hotel on upper Madison Avenue. Addison, dressed stylishly for a lunch party, with his top coat hanging on his shoulders, like a cape, had dropped in to send some jonquils—“masses and masses of them”—to Adele Harcourt, who was still laid up after tripping over some old linoleum in Lil Altemus’s ghastly new apartment and breaking her hip. “The card shouldn’t be addressed to Mrs. Adele Harcourt, which people always call her,” Addison said to Brucie, in what Brucie Random told his friend Jonsie over at Thierry’s Wine and Liquors had been a condescending voice, explaining the proper ways of society to a florist whose shop catered to people in society. Brucie kept a copy of the Social Register right next to the cash register and didn’t have to be told how to properly address Adele Harcourt, who had been a customer of his flower shop ever since Brucie had started there when he couldn’t get any more work on Broadway after Company closed in 1972. One of the great excitements of his life was that he was in the chorus on the album of Company, which happened to be playing at that very moment in the shop.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Brucie. “It’s Mrs. Vincent Belmont Harcourt, not Mrs. Adele Harcourt. Mrs. Harcourt is one of my best customers. I don’t know if it matters, but Mrs. Percy Webb, the divine Ormolu, for whom I’m going to name a scented candle, has just ordered three dozen jonquils for Mrs. Vincent Belmont Harcourt, which are being delivered to her Park Avenue apartment at this very moment. Mrs. Harcourt is very unwell, I hear.”

“Change my order to the tangerine-colored roses, then,” said Addison, who picked up a scented candle and breathed in its aroma. “Lovely, lovely.”

“That’s what Winkie bought before he died,” said Brucie.

“Yes, I know. I saw it next to his bed when I discovered his body that morning,” said Addison.

“I heard you discovered the body,” said Brucie.

“Such a shock, when I arrived there and found him dead,” said Addison, leaning over to inhale the scent of the candle again.

“Yeah, I bet it was a real surprise for you.”

Immaculata, Winkie’s cleaning lady, who was also Brucie’s cleaning lady, had heard the next morning from Albie, the superintendent of Winkie’s building, that Mr. Addison Kent had been in the apartment. Immaculata had found the empty bottle of Seconal in the wastebasket in Winkie’s bathroom, where Addison probably had dropped it before leaving, because Winkie certainly couldn’t have navigated his way into the bathroom, or so Brucie and Jonsie figured, after having swallowed a whole bottle.

“Actually, he wore one of the tangerine roses in the buttonhole of his gray suit in the casket when he was cremated. He looked very smart,” said Addison, who realized he had offended Brucie and thought a flower compliment would make things right.

“So I heard. Xavior, from the funeral home, is a friend of mine,” Brucie said pointedly.

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