Nothing but Gossip

by Marne Davis Kellogg

  I don’t mean to be sexist, or chauvinistic, or whatever you want to call it, but to me, she looked like the kind of secretary that if she made a typo and you tried to correct her, she’d just beat you up.

  “So,” Tiffany continued once she’d rejoined the planet, “I kind of took to it. I type one hundred words a minute and my dictation is up to two twenty-five.”

  Okay, so I was wrong.

  “How long have you worked for Mr. Gilhooly?” I asked.

  “Only about six months, since he moved his corporate headquarters to Roundup. His secretary in Billings didn’t want to leave. She doesn’t know what she’s missing.” She cupped Dwight’s face in her hand. “Does she, hon?”

  “Do you mind telling me where were you on Sunday night?”

  “No problem. I spend every Sunday after church at the High Plains Christian Home with my mother.”

  “Your mother?” This girl was no more than twenty-five, and her mother couldn’t have been much older than I was.

  “Well, my grandmother,” she told Dwight, who listened to her as spellbound as if she were reading the latest Michael Crichton thriller out loud. “My real mother took off when I was three. Never came back. And my grandmother raised me. But she’s real old now, and sick, so she has to live in the home. So I go over there every Sunday and play the piano and bingo and have dinner, flip quarters off my biceps—the old guys love it when I do that—things like that. It’s fun. Everybody’s extra nice. I like it.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “I’ve been thinking about being a nurse.”

  Dwight smiled like a complete idiot. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “So you didn’t go to Billings with Mr. Gilhooly on Sunday afternoon?”

  “Nope.” She shook her head.

  “Do you usually travel with him?”

  She had to consider that for a second. “Umm, well, I’d say I usually go with him when he takes his own plane. It’s a Learjet. Like sitting on a rocket.” She delivered this information to Dwight’s fly.

  “Will you excuse us a minute, Miss West?” I said.

  “No problemo. See you in a minute, Deputy Dog.” The tomato smiled wider and the jaguar’s pink tongue appeared, and Dwight stumbled in the dirt as he followed me.

  “I think I’m in love, Marshal Lilly,” he said. “I love you more, but I think I’m in love with Tiffany, big time.”

  “Listen to me, Deputy,” I told him. “Shift your brain back to normal, whatever that means, and find out whatever you can from her about Gilhooly’s operations and family life, company executives, anything that could provide us with a possible lead to who shot Alma and what all’s going on here. You with me?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’ll get on her right now. I mean, I’ll get on it right now.”

  We’re such a bunch of sex maniacs at Bennett Security International, it’s a miracle we get any business done.

  TWENTY

  Linda was squinting at her computer monitor, thick glasses down low on her nose, head tilted back. She handed me a sheaf of papers. It was a list of names and numbers. The SIBA Fund investors.

  “How did you get this?” I asked, not really sure if I wanted to know.

  She shrugged innocently. “Your brother and I fiddled around on his computer a little, and this accidentally came out. You’d think they’d be more careful. This information could fall into the wrong hands.” She smiled and indicated the closed door of my office. “He was here when I got here.”

  “Where’s Elias? Did you go with him last night?”

  “Question number one: downtown. He said he’d meet you at the Rutherford meeting, which, incidentally starts at ten, convention center auditorium at the Grand. And question number two: yes. He said he’d fill you in at the meeting. I’m not sure what we found out. And, finally, this was slipped under the door this morning. I opened it first in case it was a bomb or something. I only touched the edges.” She handed me an envelope with my name scrawled on it: Marshal Lilly Bennett. I slipped out the note:

  Dear Marshal Bennett, I apologize for any disruption we’re causing in your schedule and hope you can join me for a drink this evening at six o’clock in your cousin’s saloon so I may apologize in person. Cordially, Bob

  “Who’s Bob?”

  “Redford,” Linda practically screamed. “Rob-bert Red-ford. He invited you out.”

  Isn’t that perfect? Here I am, halfway through my life, halfway up the aisle, my wedding’s in three days, and Robert Redford asks me out. I looked at the ceiling.

  “You’re really testing me, Lord,” I said out loud. “First the Rutherfords, then the Russians, and now the Redfords. But forget it. I’m sticking with Richard Jerome and that’s that. End of subject.”

  “Aren’t you at least going to meet him?” She couldn’t believe I wasn’t.

  “No. I’m busy at six o’clock tonight. We’re going to a dinner party at the Johnsons’. Please call and give him my regrets. Now I’m going to go find out what Wade wants.”

  Linda was crestfallen.

  “Okay, listen. Why don’t you meet him for me and thank him?”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Now, would you bring me a cup of coffee?”

  Wade worked his way to his feet when I walked in. He offered his hand. The old bruise on his cheekbone had faded to nothing, and the crooked, flattened Liam Neeson veer to his nose made his face enormously charming when he smiled and greeted me. He appeared more rested than he had the day before—he’d obviously clocked some time in a tanning bed, because his skin had a slightly healthier glow. The starched collar of his shirt concealed most of the angry red scar on his neck.

  Even though Wade was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and Gucci tie—all expensive and perfectly fitted—and his manners were fine, in my mind, he’d never be able to shake the slickness of his past. The glibness of a second-rate golf pro hustling for hundreds. The slippery shine of a used-car dealer hustling for the hidden profit. The humiliation and disgrace of the unacceptable son-in-law hustling for approval.

  “Sorry to show up so early,” he said without preamble. “But I understand your brother was in Billings last night.”

  “Really?” I said and sat down, not surprised he’d been contacted.

  “Yes, a friend of mine called. Did he find out anything?”

  “Is there anything you think he should have found out?”

  Wade thrust his hands deep in his trouser pockets and shrugged his shoulders. “I hope not. I’d hate to think any of our friends tried to kill Alma. I don’t think we have any enemies up there.” He took his cane from where it leaned on the edge of the desk, walked over and looked out the window to the movie-land maelstrom below. Buck was standing on the wooden sidewalk across the street, leaning against a post, belly drooping over his Levi’s, hat pulled low, mirrored glasses shining like beacons, a longneck in his hand.

  “Hey,” Wade said, “isn’t that Robert Redford?”

  I went to look. “Where?”

  “Just went into the café.”

  He turned and we were inches away from each other. Up close he looked even better. His eyes were sky blue and flecked with gold—the same color gold as his freckles—and they betrayed an unexpected vulnerability and gentleness. His lips were sensuous and as crooked as his nose.

  The moment passed without any more acknowledgment than that of two strangers standing at the same window, and I returned to my chair as Linda gave the door a brisk knock and brought in the coffee.

  “I don’t mean to be pushy,” Wade said once Linda was gone. “But I have paid you a boatload of money, and I’m curious if you’ve come up with anything? Any clues at all?”

  “You aren’t being a bit pushy,” I answered and cupped the mug with both hands, stalling a little, weighing my words, admiring my engagement ring. Boy, it was big. “You’re entitled to ask. And the answer is: I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Elias yet this morning—he’s going to meet me at the Rutherford meetin
g—so I don’t know what, if anything, he came up with in Billings. Frankly, I doubt if there’s anything to be found up there. I’m more concerned about the meeting itself. I hope Mercedes’s security chief knows what he’s doing, because it’s starting to look like whoever tried to kill Alma has a large stake in the outcome of the vote.”

  “I got one of those letters. What’d it say?”

  I explained the bungled message and laughed at his shocked expression. “Can you believe it? Whoever sent them copied down the wrong word out of the dictionary.” As I’d been talking, I’d also been scanning the SIBA Fund investor list, and my eyes jarred to a halt. “My God, will you look at this.”

  There, in alphabetical order, in black and white, was the name of America’s most ardent environmentalist-politician-presidential candidate.

  “What?” Wade asked.

  “Duke Fletcher is an investor in SIBA.”

  “You can’t be serious.” He reached across and snatched the sheet from my fingers. “SIBA is in favor of the Russian venture. It represents everything Duke’s against. They’re destroyers.”

  I nodded, too stunned to speak. What was it with our leaders that they give us such hope and then half the time turn out to be double-crossing, underhanded, conniving, immoral bastards? Of course, if we’d just raise everybody’s salary back there in Washington, maybe we’d be able to attract a higher caliber of candidate. Who wants to go live in that godforsaken climate and take constant abuse from the press for a hundred grand a year? No one, except poor schmucks looking for ways to cut corners—they’re the only ones who can afford it. Or else they’re too young to know much that’s helpful. But Duke Fletcher. It made me sick to my stomach. He already had plenty of money. As far as I, and a lot of other people, were concerned, he was the planet Earth’s last, greatest hope.

  “Holy moly,” I said.

  Linda swept in with a fax. “Elias just sent this over.”

  The memo, retrieved out of the ether from some long-ago meeting, showed the genesis of the SIBA name: Siberian Associates. The fund had been formed specifically to take advantage of this venture.

  “I don’t believe it,” Wade said. “We’ve been neighbors for a long time and it’s not possible for Duke to be that big a fraud.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, man. Look how late it is. I’ve got to go, I want to stop by the hospital and see how Alma’s doing. I’ll see you at the meeting. You can sit with me if you want, but I’m going to be working the crowd pretty steadily, trying to keep this vote on track. Look out for the Russians, they’re loose cannons. They’ll feel you up so fast you’ll think you’re a camp follower on a troop train.”

  I laughed. “I know, I met them on Sunday, but thanks for the warning. Wade, why are you voting against Alma?”

  He grasped the top of the chair back in his hands and leaned over it toward me. “Alma only cares about herself. Always has, always will. She’s a bully who doesn’t think anything is bigger than she is, but most things are. Mercedes has consistently led the company on a responsible path. She could have made more money short-term, but she makes long-term decisions, decisions that work for the company, the environment, the employees, the stockholders. That’s why the stock stays so strong. She’s a big thinker. Long-term, everyone benefits.

  “But Alma won’t accept responsibility for herself”—Wade seemed almost out of breath—“much less for the actions of her own company. I’ve always voted against her plank. And now there she is, lying up in the hospital, still breathing in spite of the odds, and still making everyone’s life hell.”

  I suddenly felt sorry for Wade Gilhooly. I don’t know what sort of lingering illness he had, but he looked and sounded exhausted, and he spoke in such a babbling rush it was almost as though he were on speed.

  “I was sorry about your vice president, Jim Dixon. What’s the latest report on his condition?”

  “He’s in bad shape. You might not believe this, but if he dies, I’ll be a lot sorrier to lose him than Alma. Jim’s the glue in my whole operation, but sometimes he drinks more than he should. I was hoping to hand off the business to him in a few years. Now I’m not so sure.” Wade gave an ironic snort. “Life sucks. You bust your butt to get everything you want, and then by the time you figure out that’s not what you wanted, it’s too late.”

  “Yup,” I said. “That’s pretty much the way it works. One more question: Why did you fly commercially to Billings instead of taking your own plane?”

  “Three reasons: Their schedule worked for me, which saved me a few thousand dollars—that’s reasons one and two—and three, my jet’s in for maintenance. And four: I did not shoot Alma.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  A few scraggly pickets—GIVE THE LAND BACK TO THE NATIVE AMERICANS, DEATH TO AMERICAN CAPITALISTS, DOWN WITH DOW CHEMICAL, SUPPORT GROCERY WORKERS—stuff like that, shuffled back and forth behind a police barricade across the street from the hotel’s main entrance. We’re so behind in Wyoming, I love it. Bored camera crews from the local television outlets kicked invisible pebbles off the sidewalk.

  “Sort of a disappointing group of protesters you’ve got here,” I said to Curtis, the doorman. Curtis was the Scatman Cruthers of doormen. A Roundup institution born at the door of the Grand in his brown-twill coat and gold-braided cap. They did a story about him in National Geographic once, and the picture they took of him was so good he kept it taped inside the key cabinet instead of a mirror.

  He shook his head. “They’ve been using those same signs for years. I don’t think they dare carry any that say anything agin’ the oil business, ’cause they’re all a bunch of oil-business trust-funders. But you’d think with all this Russia business going on, a few interesting people would show up. We’ve got all the networks set up inside, and nothing happening. Makes us look bad.” He pocketed my twenty and patted Baby on the head. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on the dog. Hey,” he said as an afterthought. “You seen those Russians yet?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Well, hold on to yourself. They’re staying here in the hotel and the word’s out: They’re such grabbers, they scared off all our best girls, and even the five-dollar street hookers won’t come near the place.”

  Just then a black stretch limousine glided to the curb. Before Curtis could open the door, it flew open, cracking him in the knee, and a spry, tiny, wiry, old woman in a miniskirt and purple lace stockings leapt out and made a beeline across the street for the TV crew. She was a little bowlegged crab homing in on a dead jellyfish, and she’d flatten anyone or anything that got in her way. The camera lights blinked alive.

  “My name is Edith Rochester Rutherford,” she shouted into their faces in the most grating New York accent I’ve ever heard in my life. “And I live in the Del Coronado Hotel in San Diego, California. My suit is a Galanos.” She extended a lilac-tweed arm. “Nancy Reagan wears lots of Galanos, but she wears too much red.”

  It didn’t matter if the reporters knew who she was, she was alive, and that was better than any other story they had at the moment. I crossed the street and huddled up with the team.

  “Are you related to the Rutherford family?” someone asked her.

  “I am the Rutherford family,” she declared. “These girls—Mercedes and Alma—are a couple of ingrates. They’ve destroyed everything my husband—James Rutherford—ever worked for, and I’m here today to see that they get their comeuppance.”

  “I thought Bradford Rutherford was chairman before Mercedes,” said another. “What did your husband do for Rutherford Oil?”

  “He was a Wall Street stockbroker and meat-packer, but what does it matter what he did?” Aunt Edith blew him off from behind white-rimmed dark glasses so large they made her look like an ant. “The fact is these girls have headed the company down a very slippery slope.”

  “Do you care to elaborate, Mrs. Rutherford?”

  “Yes. Come to the meeting.”

  “How do you plan to vote today? Are you in favor of or opposed to the R
ussian deal?”

  “Russian deal, smussian deal. That’s nothing.” Aunt Edith opened her lilac Kate Spade tote and pulled out sheets of typed paper, which she waved around with an arthritic, red-tipped claw. She had on a pearl ring so big it looked as if she’d glued a golf ball to her hand. “I plan to propose an entirely new slate of officers and directors and clean house.” She handed out the copies, which the members of the press studied diligently. “I already have commitments from every single one of these individuals, and once they elect me chairman, we will turn Rutherford Oil into the largest, classiest oil company in the world.”

  “This is impressive,” Tom O’Neill said. He was the half-brain former coanchor of the KRUN-TV Evening News who’d gotten fired for staging pit-bull fights and then covering them as news. Now he was the catchall for the local community-access cable channel. “You say you have commitments from all of these people?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “This is big.”

  What a dope. I dropped out of the crowd and scanned the list. Here’s who was on it:

  King Saud—King of Saudi Arabia

  George Bush—Former President of the United States

  Margaret Thatcher—Former Prime Minister of Great Britain

  Julio Iglesias—Mexican diplomat

  Barbra Brolin—Singer

  Norman Schwarzkopf—Former General of Desert Storm

  Werner Erhardt—Guru

  Rosie O’Donnell—Media mogul

  Daniel Baker, M.D.—Plastic surgeon

  Jake Steinfeld—Personal trainer

  Michael Jordan—Former Basketball player

  Here’s the thing with some of the media that makes me crazy: They have no judgment, no discretion. They are just big vacuum cleaners that suck up information and then spew it out in high-fidelity, Surround-Sound diarrhea without a single thought as to the legitimacy of the information or the credibility of their sources. Hey! they exclaim. First Amendment. It’s news. While anyone with any sense knows it’s not news at all. It’s nothing but a load of crap.