Kate tilted her head to one side and choked, “Oh god. That’s another story.”
“Aspen?”
“Nothing really happened in Aspen,” she said.
“But?”
“We got pretty fucked up that night with all the free coke. Rico took us both back to his room at some little hotel away from the main drag, and before I knew it I was sitting on the floor. Rico was giving me a backrub, and when I looked up M.C...,” she cleared her throat. “...Macayla was sitting on the sofa and stripping off her blouse. I promise you, I was wasted, but when I saw those little teenage rosebud breasts I got myself the hell out of there.”
I tried to imagine the scene, all too easy to do with my own vivid memories of Rico. “So, you didn’t do anything wrong. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“You don’t get it. Yeah, I didn’t do anything, but my daughter did. And no matter what, she’s still a little girl. She’ll never look me in the eyes again without thinking about what she did.”
I’d received a fax from Mrs. French, the wedding planner. It included recommended flowers, a soloist and a band, and invitations that confirmed the historically correct date with time and locations of both the ceremony and the reception. Adam knew I planned to wear my mother’s wedding dress, so that just left the menu. Oh, and the bridesmaids. I needed to list the bridesmaids.
My indecision not to reply to the fax somehow became a decision, and the wedding-wheels were in motion without me. The invitations were ordered, the required deposits made. The whole process took on a life of its own, no doubt under the stern guidance of Mrs. French. I felt like I was trying to back-peddle in one of those children’s playrooms filled with colorful plastic balls. I felt like I’d been French-fried, and there was no way out of the basket.
Adam had doled out a litany of prepared excuses when he tried to explain not contacting the private investigator. He told me he knew it was a futile assignment and was trying to spare me embarrassment. He was trying to protect me. Yes, he did lie to me. And no, he said I still had no business digging into my dad’s old business. Not now. Not ever.
“If it was his business, maybe not,” I said. “But this is about his personal life, and my mother. I have every right to know what the hell he did.”
“It’s over, Breecie. Your mom is gone, and so are her killers. Justice has been served. You need to let it go.”
“And I’m just supposed to forget you lied to me?”
“You are supposed to remember that I’m doing everything I can to spare you and ensure our future, Breeze. It’s time to come home. I’m having dinner with Maryland’s governor this weekend at Galileo Grille. I want you to be here.”
Translation. He expected me to fly in to be there.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Dead Mistress
Galileo Grille was my favorite D.C. restaurant but I was still in no hurry to completely forgive and forget, even if it would be over sumptuous rockfish and spinach gnocchi. Instead, I arranged a date with my dad to deliver him Sunday brunch courtesy of Taco Bell. His speech was improving dramatically and he’d been in decent spirits, but my own mood plummeted when I passed the familiar black Mercedes heading away from Dad’s house. I do not like George Baird.
“What is it with that man?” I asked. “And don’t tell me he wasn’t just here.”
“Who? George? He’s a friend of mine. Keeps me company. Cheats at Bridge, but a damn good po... po... poker player.”
“I haven’t seen you play a hand of cards in years,” I said. “He gives me the creeps.”
“Just looks a little creepy, no hair and all.”
Baird didn’t have a shiny bald head. He had a shiny bald body. I muffled an irascible groan. What I thought odd about the man, Kate found to be a huge turn-on. “Is he a chemo patient?”
“That husky old fart? No way. Has a disease called Alo... Alopecia. Damn thing caused every hair on his body to fall out in just two short two weeks. He looks a little unusual, but he’s as tough as they come.”
“Where do you know him from?” “This is a small town,” he chortled.
“Dad, you need to start talking to me.”
“So, let’s talk. What’s up with your law practice? And better yet, your wedding?” He shuffled toward the kitchen, anticipating I would follow like a trained dog.
“Law practice doing well without me. Wedding plans doing even better without me. My best news is I now have a literary agent.”
“A what?”
“You heard. I have an agent. I sent him my outline and he liked what he saw. He’s already talked to a few editors.”
“Why would you go and call attention to yourself like that?”
“Call attention to myself? Shit, Dad. That’s what you call me trying to get published?”
I received the agency contract in the mail the week before, mindful there was no one to help me celebrate. Adam was busy with his campaign tactics and antics. I’d learned my lesson that my housemates were not my friends. Kate had informed me Baird was coming to town, not to mention she may not be up to celebrating any of my good news. If only she knew, she was the only true friend I had.
Dad went to the stainless steel sink to fill a watering bucket. He had a single plant in his home, a spindly Christmas cactus covered with brown splotches. “Ask me my questions.”
“You fish for marlin in?”
“The ocean.”
“You cut your meat with?”
“Knife. Come on. Give me something hard.”
“Her full name is Erin?”
Dad’s eyes hardened and he gritted his teeth.
“I want to know about Erin McGinnis.”
“What’s to know about?” The copper watering spout sank behind the arms of the droopy plant and the water splashed all around its base, half of it spilling to the floor.
“This time I’m not leaving until I get some answers. I know she was your mistress. I’ve read your letters.”
He continued to over-water the succulent, never looking up at me. From the side, I could see his jaw slightly soften from tense irritation to an exasperated surrender. “Your mother and I married young, Breecie. Didn’t have to, mind you, but we just up and married one day like most kids our age. She held down a secre..., secre...”
“Secretarial.”
“Don’t say my words for me. Yeah, that job. It helped keep me in law school. I attended classes, studied late, and worked any odd jobs I could manage. We got by.”
“You made a nice life together.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Don’t get me wrong, when you and your sister were born, that was one happy day in my life.”
“But not the happiest.”
“You want the truth?” He slammed the metal watering can to the tile floor. The clamoring startled both of us. “The happiest day in my life was when I met Erin McGinnis, and I have no qualms about it. She wasn’t my goddamn mistress. She was the love of my life. This is something you are just going to have to live with. You damn well asked for it.” His hands trembled as he braced his body against the kitchen counter.
“Dad, sit down.” I poured him a glass of cold water. He fell against the hard ladder-back chair and took a couple deep breaths between sips.
“What your mother and I had was a farce. Our marriage was a public mirage, kept only to advance my law career and assure your mother a place in her infernal social climbing.”
“Did Mom know about the other woman?”
“She did, and she couldn’t have cared less. If anything, it gave her a license not to have to touch me.” His voice held a steel edge, more frigid than he was implying my mother was.
In spite of marital difficulties, I couldn’t imagine my mother standing by and ignoring my father’s infidelity. I still had pressing questions about Erin McGinnis. “Where is Erin now?”
“Dead. And it’s time you leave her soul and that of your dear departed mother alone, in peace.”
I pushed
myself off the chair and crossed to the sink, retrieving the watering can and placing it on the counter. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. First, I have a couple of hard questions to ask. Did you have anything to do with Mother’s death?”
“For crisakes, Breecie. You were there. You know what happened. Your mother went and blabbed to every society editor in the Mid-Atlantic states that she was chairing some high-society fundraising gala that night. Street thugs knew her schedule before I did. She goes and forgets something, returns home before her soirée dinner is served, and gets herself caught surprising a burglar.”
I felt the piercing rush of anxiety starting in my lower back, surging through my neck and taking residence somewhere between my eyes. I experienced each still moment of the wounding past like some slow motion Hitchcock film.
Lights on. Camera rolling. Intro: Breecie Lemay tries to grieve for her murdered mother, but instead finds herself glued to the police investigation intently focused on her father.
“One more question. How is it you had possession of that Russian revolver? I remember the police tied the ammunition to a gun just like it. A gun that had been stolen.”
His square jaw tensed. “This interrogation is over, counselor.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Like Spanish Fly
George Baird didn’t spend that weekend with Kate. He banged her, just like he told James Lemay he was hell bent on doing, then he left town, telling Kate pressing business in Mexico called him away.
Instead of flying his King Air across the border, the aircraft remained tucked inside the hidden hangar at the end of his landing strip. No reason to rush off to Mexico. Baird exulted in the luxury of seclusion his rustic cabin afforded. No one could understand the kinds of pressure that consumed his life. His best company was most often himself.
The chinchilla business was the perfect distraction. Absolutely brilliant. It wasn’t beyond controversy, and that’s what made it so ideal. Baird relished the animal rights bullshit activists protesting his business. He deduced that if anything else surfaced under scrutiny, the authorities would have had enough of the lot of them and leave him be.
Baird spent four mental health days at the cabin, consuming several bottles of 1982 Mouton Rothschild, and starting a wet-wood fire by using the wooden heels off a pair of Prada shoes some bimbo had left behind. He felt sated.
Only then did he navigate his King Air across the Mexican border. The car was waiting for him, and they silently slipped into the confines of his hotel room near the Embassy of the Russian Federation. The room had been prepared with the required bottle of Tobala Mezcal, a humidor of Cohiba cigars, and freshly laundered yellow linens. Baird only slept on yellow sheets. He took a quick shower—no need to shave, then dressed in white pants and a traditional white Mexican shirt.
A short drive away, the receptionist greeted him in a familiar way. She was half-professional. The other half was cheap hooker, and most likely available at half the price of that.
“You can’t go in there, Mr. Baird,” she said in perfect English. “They’re in a private meeting.”
“I outrank a Private,” Baird said, bursting through the massive double doors. “Gentlemen. Now or never.”
The seven men cloistered around the conference table jolted to attention.
“You’re moving too fast for us,” the man sitting at the head of the table said. He reached for composure as clearly as he reached for his burning cigarette.
“I have two other offers on the table, so don’t waste my time,” Baird lied. “I want to deal with you. You have the labs in place, and the production capabilities I need. I’ve negotiated for all the marketing and the packaging. You may not be impressed, but Americans will be scrambling across the border to buy this shit, and they want the fancy packaging.”
“It’s not like you have us selling some F.D.A. approved drug down here for less money,” their mousey financial guy coughed up.
“Like you all haven’t gotten rich selling Spanish Fly?” Baird laughed. He rolled an empty chair under his heavy frame and squatted down, shoving his bald head in front of the bean counter. “There are multi-million dollar companies selling pills guaranteed to increase a woman’s bust size. Now, no girl gets big titties by swallowing a pill, but they keep selling them. And when things get ugly with the guarantee, they just turn around under a new company, change the name, change the package, and sell the hell out of the newest and greatest pill guaranteed to build big boobs.” Baird pulled some sample packaging out from his briefcase, spewing them across the table.
The man at the head snuffed out his cigarette. “Where do we go from here, Mr. Baird?”
“We market it under two product lines. There’s the Fountain-of-Youth shit, and the Get-Hard-Forever. Maybe one’s a pill and one’s a cream. Hell, I don’t know and I don’t care, but both products have to be ready to roll out in ninety days, or I’m moving on.”
“But it’s the same exact stuff,” one old man in the corner said from behind a notepad.
“Don’t you ever let me hear you say that again,” Baird said. His eyes engorged, even more pronounced since no eyebrows were evident to suppress their bulbous appearance.
“And you’re still going with bull semen? That’s your secret ingredient?” the bean counter asked.
“It won’t be a secret when we start selling. And the beauty of the deal is it’s the real McCoy. Santa Gertrudis bull semen. Guaranteed. And who the fuck are you to question it?”
Another man piped up, “We don’t need to know that it works. We do need to know it won’t be harmful. Burn the skin, start some sort of disease.”
It’s tested,” Baird snapped. “It doesn’t work and it doesn’t hurt.”
The contractual papers were prepared and each man around the table, including George Baird, signed. James Lemay’s signature had been notarized, an original signature secured one week earlier.
My phone rang at six A.M. It was my D.C. private investigator. “Christ, could you call any earlier?”
“Honest, you’re still in Colorado? I thought you were back here.”
“Why would you think that?”
“The newspapers,” he said. “I must see a photo every few days, you and Mr. Chancellor. All about your upcoming wedding.”
File photos. “What is it you’ve found?” I fumbled to open the blinds and draw dawn’s sunlight inside the room.
“I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “You had me looking for both this Erin McGinnis, and a Naomi Gaines.” He spelled their names back to me. “I got that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, so far I still haven’t turned up a thing on Erin McGinnis, but the damndest thing. I mean, it could just be a coincidence, but in this business...”
“...Tell me,” I pushed.
“The thing is, this Naomi lady. Gaines is her married name. She’d been married for almost forty years when her husband passed away. Turns out her maiden name was McGinnis.”
Chapter Thirty
Family Photos
Did that mean maybe Naomi’s middle name was Erin?
“No,” my investigator told me. “Remember, you had me look into Naomi Gaines. I would have made some connection. Her middle name is Margaret, so maybe you can derive Meg out of it. Maybe Peg. Nothing connects with the name Erin.”
It didn’t matter. Sweet old Naomi McGinnis Gaines was hiding something, after all. She may not be Erin, but she damn well must know who and where Erin McGinnis was. I’d be polite and wait until eight A.M. before I huffed and I puffed and blew her door down. Or at least started ranting.
I tossed my purse into the front seat of the Jeep when I noticed Rudy down by the corral. He was talking to the frequent veterinarian visitor. It didn’t look like Rudy’s English was getting him very far. I watched as he threw his arms up into the air.
Five long pens housed over one-hundred bulls. Rudy told me Ari had doubled his herd in just the last few months, which meant Rudy’s worklo
ad doubled. He provided a constant supply of fresh spring water to the pens and filled the feed bunks twice a day.
“Good morning, Senorita Lemay,” Rudy said.
“Good morning, Rudy. How are the bulls today? Is there a problem?” I turned to the vet for my answer, expecting I could intervene and help with the line of communications.
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