A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  "To make a profit," Valerie said patiendy. "That seems to be the whole reason for building Graceville."

  "That's not true!" Lily cried in anguish. "That's a terrible thing to say!"

  "I know," Valerie said swiftly. "And we don't know it for sure; we're guessing about a lot of this, and maybe I went too far. We aren't sure of anything," she said, looking at Nick. "We have no proof All we have are a lot of theories."

  Nick was writing a sequence of events. "Right," he said absendy. "We won't have anything until someone talks, or lets us see the Foundation books. We can talk to the board members, though; interview them for 'Blow-Up.' One of them might give us some answers. We should start that as soon as possible. This week."

  Valerie nodded. "Although..." She hesitated. "That will alert all of them."

  "We can't help that. At some point they're going to know. We'll just keep it vague when they ask what we're looking for. You know something we don't have? Dates. When did Beauregard Development buy the land, and when was it sold to the Foundation?"

  'I don't know when Beauregard bought it. The Foundation bought it three months later."

  "I know that, but when did all this happen? Do you know?"

  "No. Sophie might."

  "Could you call her? As long as we're putting this together, let's try to get it all."

  "Eleven o'clock," Valerie murmured. "But she never goes to bed before midnight."

  Sophie answered on the first ring. "Of course I'm still up," she told Valerie. "I brought work home; I'm at my desk. What do you need?" Valerie told her. "I don't know offhand, but I brought home that file; let me check." In a minute she was back. "Found it. Sold to Beauregard Development on December second; they closed the deal on January fifiJi."

  A coldness clutched Valerie's heart. January fifth. The day Carlton was killed.

  She thought back, remembering. Everything about the crash was as vivid now as the day after it happened. Carl had spent the night in his office; she had heard him opening and closing desk drawers. He had

  come into the bedroom at seven, carrying a folder of papers. rm£foin^ back. Right away. I have things to do; I can^t put them off any longer.

  That was three days before they had been scheduled to return.

  "—still with me?" Sophie asked.

  "Yes," Valerie said. "What did you say?"

  "I gave you the other date you wanted. The Foundation bought the land from Beauregard Development on April eighth. Was that all you wanted?"

  "Yes. Thank you." When Valerie hung up, she looked at Nick. "Beauregard bought the land on December second. The closing was January fifth."

  "That's the day the plane crashed!" Lily cried.

  "Carl was in a hurry to come back," Valerie told Nick. "He said he had business to take care of"

  "Either he decided he had to be there, or he wanted to stop it."

  "I think he wanted to stop it," Valerie said. "He was terribly anxious, and in such a rush he didn't even do his whole checklist before we took off."

  "Second thoughts," mused Nick. "Worried about losing the money and never getting it back..."

  "Or it wasn't a straight deal and he decided not to go along..."

  "Or he didn't want to be tied forever to Sybille."

  Once again their eyes met and held. In the midst of the excitement of building from one thought to another was a different kind of excitement: working together, thinking together, making leaps from fragmentary information, perhaps too high, perhaps too fast, but together, in a rhythm that was almost sexual. "I suppose we'll never know," Nick said. "But it probably was one of those reasons. Maybe all of them."

  Valerie was still remembering. That whole day rushed through her memory like a speeded-up film. Sorry, Vol ... Tried to keep it. Now youHl know. Shit, lost control ... lost it! Thought Fd fix it.. .get started again. Too late. Sorry, Val, sorry.. .Acted like water in the tanks.. .But — both tanks? Never had any before. Didn't check. Too much hurry to take off. Not my fault! No accident! Listen! Water in both tanks! Fuck it, should have thought she might..."

  Valerie closed her eyes. She felt sick. "Nick, listen." She repeated what Carl had said.

  ^"5/;^?^^ Nick echoed.

  "The investigators thought he meant his plane. Calling it 'she.' But if he meant a woman..."

  "Don't say it," Lily whimpered. She held her hands over her ears and squeezed shut her eyes.

  "She was there," Valerie said to Nick. "She and Lily were at the house with us, the day before we left to fly back."

  They looked at each other for a long time, past Lily's huddled form. The day before the closing. The day before Sybille spent Carl's thirteen million dollars to buy land for Graceville. The day before Carl decided to rush back, maybe to stop the closing, maybe to change something involved in it, maybe simply to be more active in the deal. The day before the plane crashed.

  "Nobody would do anything like that!" Lily said, her voice high and wavering. It was a question, and a plea, more than a certainty. "Nobody would make a plane crash! Five people... five people could have been killed! You can't think anybody would do that! Not... not Sybille... not anybody!"

  "We don't know what happened," Nick said somberly, "but we have to find out."

  Valerie had picked up Nick's pencil and was drawing dark lines with it on the pad of paper. "Even if she had something to do with it, she wouldn't have done it herself, would she?"

  "Probably not. But that would mean hiring someone; she wouldn't take that chance."

  "Her pilot," Valerie said. "She flew up there in the Foundation plane."

  Nick put his hand on hers, stopping her from making any more jagged, anguished pencil marks. "We have to talk to him. There's nothing else we can do. We have to find out what happened that night."

  Chapter 28

  ray for Reverend Lily!" Floyd Bassington boomed, his voice rolling through the Cathedral of Joy and into the television cameras, where it traveled thousands of miles to the faithful throughout the land. "She is ill and lies in a narrow bed, desolate at not being here with you. She will return as soon as she can; she knows how you need her; she knows how you long to have her with you again. She will be back very soon! She is watching us now: hear us, Reverend Lily! We are longing for your return! We send you our prayers; we send you our love!"

  Floyd Bassington was having the time of his life. Never had he preached in a setting of such magnificence, to so many bowed heads arrayed before him like a field of drooping flowers, and to all those invisible millions in the land of television, hanging on his words. He had never been televised. This was a first. His chest billowed out, he stood on his toes and looked up. I lift up mine eyes to the cameras, he thought happily.

  "But we have an enemy!" he cried, ending his pause before his television audience could get resdess and switch to another channel. Faces

  swam up to him; the field of flowers became a heaven of pale moons with startled eyes fastened on Floyd Bassington. "An enemy who wants to destroy our beloved Reverend Lily! An enemy who plots to throw her to the wolves of rapacious atheists and gossipmongers! An enemy who schemes to tear her frail body to pieces with bayonets of lies and innuendo!"

  "Shit, he's off his rocker," muttered Arch Warman to Monte James and Sybille. They were in Lily's apartment behind the pulpit, watching Bassington on television. "Get him to tone it down. Signal him, or something. Nobody's gonna take this crap seriously."

  "Of course they will," Sybille said absendy. She was standing, about to leave the room. "He's like a cheerleader; the words aren't important, it's rhythm and volume that count. I'll be back in a minute."

  'Tou leaving again?" Monte James demanded. "What the fuck's going on? This is important, damn it, you ought to know what he's saying out there."

  Sybille slipped through the door without answering. She could not let them know, but she was going mad with worry about Lily. She had disappeared. Sybille had called every hotel and motel, every hospital, everyone at her production company, t
he members of the Foundation board; no one knew anything about Lily. Gone, gone, gone. The word hammered in Sybille's head. She did not sleep. She did not eat. She telephoned other ministers, other television evangelists, she even tracked down Rudy Dominus, altering her story so no one knew how frantic she was. "She's taking a trip and thought she might stop by to see you; I wanted to catch her if she was there. Not yet? Well, I'll find her somewhere else. Thanks so much..."

  Gone, gone, gone. I have nothing without her, Sybille thought, and then wiped out the thought. She went to the pay telephone at the other end of the corridor and called the answering machine at her home. "Sybille, I'm staying with a friend." Lily's voice, high and tremulous, came through the tape. "I'll be here awhile. I don't want to talk to you. I can't preach. Don't worry about me. I'm fine." Sybille heard the sound of the telephone being hung up.

  She stood still with the receiver in her hand. Her knees were weak. Staying with a friend. Lily had no friends. Whom had she latched onto? Who was working on her, poisoning her against Sybille, stealing her away?

  "Sybille," Arch Warman said urgendy "We want you to hear this."

  For the first time, she did not put him in his place. In silence, she followed him back to Lily's suite.

  "Television! The blessed technology that brings Reverend Lily to millions of souls who hunger for her voice, this blessed technology is being perverted for evil, to cut her into shreds and eliminate this church!" Bassington took a long breath and sent a long groan into the microphone. "E-and-N. A cable television network called E-and-N has decided to hound Reverend Lily to her death. It's not enough for these media maniacs that they attacked Jim and Tammy Bakker—poor sinners who deserve compassion!—and have swept them from sight with their sanctimonious brooms. Flushed with victory, they search out new victims! They turn to the purest of them all, the apotheosis of virginal, loving womanhood, and have sent their hired thugs to pry into the affairs of the Hour of Grace Foundation! Like rats with quivering nostrils, they have invaded the offices, camped on the doorsteps and the very desks of the dedicated men who make this holy cathedral, and all of Grace-ville, possible."

  "He shouldn't spend so much time on that," said Monte James. "Why give those bastards free publicity? He shouldn't even give the name of the network."

  "Then how would anyone attack them?" Sybille asked angrily. She was angry at everything and everyone now— staying with a friend, stay-in£i with a friend. She was angry at all of them, and these two were the worst. Stupid fools, letting Lily go; how did she get saddled with such asses? "You haven't forgotten that we planned the attack; even you can remember what we did yesterday."

  "You did it; we went along," he growled. "Right. But Floyd shouldn't talk about them asking us questions. He should just get on with it!"

  "And so we will make them feel the heat!" Bassington intoned. "We will march shoulder to shoulder on their doorstep! We will invade their offices! We will camp on their desks, with millions of letters and telegrams! We will warn their advertisers with our protests! We will shut that damnable E-and-N network down!

  "March!" he roared. "March shoulder to shoulder! The ushers are passing around the address of the E-and-N offices and studios, and it is appearing now on your television screens. Go there! March on them! Picket them! Lie on their doorsteps so no one can go inside and join them in their evil doings! Write to them! Telegraph them! Tell them to leave our Reverend Lily alone or we will shut them down forever! Tell their advertisers we will never buy their products until they withdraw their support from that devil's network. Tell them—"

  He had to catch his breath. His excitement was a whirlwind inside

  him; he was dizzy and could not remember what he had been about to say. Tell them— Tell them what? The lights were hellishly hot. His shirt was drenched. Even his feet were perspiring; his toes slipped against each other. Behind his back he made an urgent gesture to the organist and the choir. Instantly the music rose, covering Bassington's confusion like the incoming tide, lifting the congregation on waves of glory.

  The next day, the campaign against E8cN began.

  Pickets arrived early Monday morning, marching around the E8cN building in three groups of ten. Every hour they were replaced by three new groups. "Too organized, and not enough passion," Nick said, standing at the window of his office with Les and Valerie. "They're probably hired. It has the staged look of something Sybille would do. She must feel this is a real crisis."

  "Or it's the board that's doing it," said Les. "What did you say to those guys?" he asked Valerie. "Tou must have scared the shit out of them."

  She shook her head. "I only talked to the three board members who aren't on the executive committee, and we were very low-key. I just asked questions, no accusations, and as far as I know Earl was the same. He talked to James and Warman and Bassington. And got nowhere."

  "But something scared them," said Nick. "Or it was just the fact that you were asking questions. I suppose up to now they felt immune from all the scandals around them, because of Lily. Who could believe she'd be mixed up in anything illegal?"

  "Not me," said Les. "Did you get anything, Val, from the ones you talked to?"

  "Nothing; I'm sure they don't know what's going on. If anything is. One of them, a religion professor named Lars Olssen, is so good I thought Sybille might have invented him for the part."

  "You mean a good actor?"

  "I mean a good man. He believes absolutely in goodness. He doesn't pretend there isn't a lot of bad around, but he has no doubt that it can be isolated and turned to good if good men care enough and take action. If anything peculiar is going on at Graceville, he doesn't know about it."

  "But you know some of them have got to be raking in millions."

  "I'd put money on it," said Nick, "but not if I had to have proof We've nibbled around the edges and made a lot of smart guesses. What can we do with that? We can't go on the air with innuendoes."

  "So you haven't got a program."

  "Not right now. And I don't see it happening."

  "Shit." Les shot a glance at Valerie. "Lousy deal."

  She was gazing at the pickets below. A crowd was watching from across the street. We should film it, she thought, in case we do have a program on Graceville. They already had a lot of background film, ready to be spliced together: clips of Lily preaching, footage of Graceville, the church, building permits for everything in the town issued to Marrach Construction, shots of Arch Warman's construction foreman making regular visits to Warman Developers and Contractors, Floyd Bassington's vacation houses in the Cayman Islands and northern Minnesota, Monte James's Hour of Grace Foundation Porsche, and his homes in Aspen and Beverly Hills, and the Hour of Grace Foundation jet.

  But all that was only the tip of what was probably a very large iceberg. It was not enough for a feature on "Blow-Up." Valerie couldn't pretend it was; she and Nick had gone over and over it. It had been eating at her all weekend: her idea, her show... and she couldn't do it. "Two in a row," she said to Les. "Is that a record: losing two stories before I've even officially begun?"

  "Lousy deal," he said again. "I wish I could do something."

  "So do I. Of course, if we could get a look at the Foundation books, or the construction company's, or find out who were the shareholders in Beauregard Development..." The pickets had started a chant; through the closed window, she could hear the rhythm, but not the words. "But that probably won't happen, so we're stuck. Graceville is still a mystery, and so is my first program on 'Blow-Up.' I may have to rely on superstition."

  "Meaning?"

  "The third time has to be a charm."

  Les chuckled. "Sounds fine to me. First things first, though." He turned back to the window. "Why don't we get rid of that army down there? They don't exactly improve our image. If we tell them there's no program, they'll disappear."

  "No," said Nick. "Why give it away that we haven't got anything? I don't mind a few pickets, and the publicity may jog somebody's memory, ma
ybe even a conscience here or there; something could break that would give us a program after all."

  "That makes two wishftil thinkers," Valerie said, and she and Nick smiled together.

  Les eyed them approvingly, feeling middle-aged and well married.

  and suddenly driven to nudge romance forward. "Why don't you two come to dinner this weekend?" he asked casually. "I kind of like the idea of the four of us spending some time together."

  "I like it, too," Valerie said, still smiling.

  "Friday," Nick suggested to Les. "Valerie and I have something to do on Saturday."

  "I'll check at home," Les said, and returned to his office.

  "Saturday?" Valerie asked.

  "If you're free. By then Sybille's pilot will be back from vacation. Is that all right?"

  "Yes. Thank you. I'd like to have this behind us."

  "We may not learn anything," Nick said.

  "Then we'll have to look somewhere else," Valerie said, trying to keep it light. "Do you know, Carl hated mystery novels and movies. I never would have thought he'd leave me a mess of them." She cast another look at the pickets. Someone was photographing them, and also the crowd across the street. Reporters, Valerie thought. And soon there will be television cameras. "I'd better get to work," she said. "I haven't started my segment for this week."

  "Friday night," Nick said as she turned, "after we go to Les's for dinner, will you come home with me?"

  "Yes. I'd love to. For a few hours."

  He gave her a long look, then put his arms around her. "Listen. You know this, but I'll tell you again. Chad thinks you're terrific. He talks about you all the time, he can't wait to see you, he saves up things to tell you. Just like his father. He'd like nothing better than to find you at our breakfast table. Just like his father."

  "He might, for a few minutes. But then he might start worrying, in case nothing comes next with us. Then he'd be worse off, not knowing and afraid to ask."

  "Chad is never afraid to ask. His curiosity is insatiable and bigger than all of us. He'll ask."