Her Man Friday(50)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"Ooo, well, excuuuuse me, Mr. Clean," Eddie said, straightening as he lowered his feet back to the floor. "I didn’t mean to leave fingerprints."

Leo let that one go without comment, then watched as Eddie thumbed through the file. When he noted the quick passage of text and photos and a variety of documents, then more text and more photos and more documents, he uttered a mumble of resignation. Looked like he’d be up late reading tonight, he thought. Unless, of course, he was up late with Miss Rigby. At which point, of course, reading would be the last thing on his mind. Unless he was reading her—

As quickly as the erotic images began to erupt in his brain, Eddie’s rusty voice squelched them. "I’m gonna assume you already know the obvious about King Kimball," he said. "The poverty-stricken beginnings, the brilliant mind, all that cutting-edge technology he invented, the business he built from scratch—"

"Yeah, yeah, assume away," Leo said, interrupting him. "I don’t want the People magazine version. I want the ground-in dirt, too."

Eddie smiled with satisfaction. "Okay. Did you know he used to boink his social secretary, one Miss Lily Marie Rigby, of the Main Line Rigbys, on a regular basis?"

Leo winced at Eddie’s command of the vernacular—boink, after all, didn’t come close to what he suspected Miss Rigby was capable of doing—then snapped to attention at the wealth of information in Eddie’s one simple question. "Used to? You mean he doesn’t still? And Lily Rigby is from a Main Line family? Are you sure?"

"Yep and nope and yep and yep," Eddie replied. "She and Kimball lived together when they were in college, but evidently the hot-hot-hot went out of that relationship a loooong time ago. And the luscious Miss Rigby did, in fact, grow up in the lap of luxury, a member of one of Philadelphia’s oldest and most illustrious families—until her old man blew the family fortune when she was in high school."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Leo said, dropping onto the sofa opposite Eddie. "What are you talking about?"

Obviously delighted to have Leo at a disadvantage, Eddie said, "Got any beer? I gotta wicked thirst been doggin’ me all afternoon. And this is a great story."

Leo rose and made his way to the kitchen. Over his shoulder he called, "It better not be more than thirty minutes great. I need you gone by then."

"No People magazine version, I promise. I’ll give you the TV Guide Fall Preview capsule review, instead—how’ll that be?"

"Fine. Just get on with it."

Leo grabbed a beer for them both, relishing the wet hiss of each cap that signaled their opening, then returned to his seat on the sofa. Eddie enjoyed a healthy swig of the brew as he loosened his Valentino necktie, clearly gearing up for what he had to reveal. Then he leaned back comfortably, one arm folded behind his head.

"Once upon a time," he began, "there was a little princess named Lily Rigby who had everything a girl could ever want. Rich mommy and daddy. Big house on a hill in Ardmore. Sports car. White cotillion dress. You name it. Then, one day, when she was sixteen, her daddy lost everything. Now, mind you, Mr. Harrison Rigby was one helluva of a businessman. Talk about your self-made millionaires. He just panicked, and waited too long to try to recover. Something that sort of left his family, oh… Destitute."

Eddie smiled, as if proud of himself for using a word like destitute correctly.

"Anyway," he continued, "the Rigbys move into a homeless shelter in Philadelphia for a few months, and—"

"A homeless shelter?" Leo echoed, nearly choking on his beer. "Miss Rigby lived in a homeless shelter when she was a teenager?"

At his question, Eddie, too, nearly strangled on the slug of beer he’d pulled into his mouth. Wiping his chin with the back of his fist, he sputtered, "Jeez, Leo, you actually call her ‘Miss Rigby?’ What the hell have you been doing out at that estate for the last two weeks?" He arched his dark eyebrows in thought, as if something had just occurred to him. "Unless, you’re using the ‘Miss’ part as a shortened form of ‘Mistress,’ in which case, I gotta hand it to ya, big guy, ’cause I ain’t never had the nerve to let a woman dress up in black leather and tell me to—"

"Just get on with the story, Eddie."

Eddie shook his head, clearly disappointed in Leo’s diminished sense of adventure. Then he shrugged, enjoyed another swallow of beer, and continued. "Okay, so Princess Lily may be poor, but she’s got a brain on her that won’t quit. Her IQ is a hundred and forty-seven, did you know that?"

Leo stiffened. Miss Rigby’s IQ was higher than his? By five points?

"So she gets into Harvard on the Big Brain Scholarship, where she meets Schuyler Kimball, another penniless geek, whose way through the ivy halls is being paid by the Biggest Brain of All Scholarship. Are you still with me, Leo?"

"Oh, you bet." But somehow, he hadn’t quite moved past the fact that Miss Rigby was smarter than he was.

"I guess when two big brains meet like that, their libidos can’t be far behind," Eddie continued, "because the two of them shacked up the whole time they were in school together."

Leo choked on another swallow of beer. "Shacked up?" he repeated, his version a bit louder than Eddie’s. "Miss Rigby and Kimball lived together for that length of time?"

"College time, too," Eddie clarified. "And you know how randy those years are, Leo. They musta been at it like rabbits."

Leo shook his head slowly in disbelief. Well, why was he so surprised? he asked himself. He’d known there was something more to Miss Rigby’s relationship with Kimball than simple employment. He’d known that her feelings for the man went far deeper than a social secretary’s should. He’d known that. And he was always, always, right about these things. So then why did he suddenly feel so cheated by the knowledge? Why?

Because, dammit, he’d wanted to be wrong about it, that’s why.

"What else?" he asked, hesitant to hear any more, but knowing he had little choice. Not only was all this essential information, but when you got Eddie Dolan started on a story like this, it was impossible to shut him up until he was through.

Eddie swallowed some more beer before continuing. "The two of them have stayed together since college," he said, "but not always in the romantic sense. Nobody seems to know for sure exactly what their relationship is, but it doesn’t look like they do much boinking these days. Not with each other, anyway. King Kimball certainly seems to be on the boinking tour of all the capitals of the world, but Princess Lily doesn’t seem to be boinking anybody at all." He eyed Leo with much interest. "Unless you know something I don’t know. Which isn’t likely, seeing as how I’m the one with the big fat file folder. And you don’t show up in there until almost the last page."