Nothing but Gossip

by Marne Davis Kellogg

  Did it make a difference? I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure I had what I needed. At least I thought I did until my phone rang on the way back to the airport.

  “Kennedy McGee’s escaped.”

  I’ve never heard Jack Lewis sound so low in my life.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The setting sun burned through the windows as the helicopter raced south to Roundup and the Kendalls’ party, the first major event on the calendar of our wedding festivities. Tom and Sparky Kendall were our best friends, and I knew she had really pulled out all the stops for tonight’s black-tie dinner-dance bash.

  “I just want to be sure all your out-of-town guests will be comfortable,” Sparky had said earlier. “Most of them think they’re going to have to survive on beef jerky and hardtack all weekend. But, by the time I’m done with them, they won’t think they’ve even left Palm Beach, until they get to the main event, of course.”

  The Main Event. Thirty-six hours to go. I couldn’t wait. Once we lifted off, I hatched a double espresso— no way I could afford to slow down now. Do you know they have Starbucks in Billings? I can’t even believe it.

  I rang up Richard on his car phone. “Hey,” I yelled over the engine noise. “What’s up?”

  “On our way to the club.” His voice was tight.

  “ ‘Our’ as in your parents?” I pulled off my boots and jeans.

  “Yup. Where are you?”

  I looked out the window. “Starting over the Bighorns. Is everything all right? Everybody happy?”

  “Very, very happy.” His voice had that tone that implied he’d gotten a few things straightened out and everybody had decided to have a very fine time indeed.

  I put on my stockings and black-suede heels. “I can’t wait to see you. I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too. Hurry up. Everything’s fine.”

  I slipped into my new navy-satin gown and had just finished hanging Grandmother’s diamonds around my neck and clipping on the matching earrings when we touched down on the putting green at the Roundup Country Club. Richard waited at the bottom of the steps to greet me in his double-breasted tuxedo, looking as if he’d just walked off a runway in Milan.

  “Well?” he said after he’d kissed me and handed me a drink. “You don’t look like you’ve been in Montana. You look beautiful. Tell me what you found out.”

  “I’m a lot closer. I think I’ve got a couple of people I can eliminate at least. Have you been here very long?”

  “Only about five minutes. We stopped by to see Elias on the way over. He’s in and out, but Linda’s there holding his hand. We’ll go by and see him on our way home.”

  I didn’t have the nerve to ask him about his parents, and frankly, even though I was excited about the party and all the rest of the festivities, I was also a little jittery and preoccupied and stressed out about Alma and Wade and Elias, and I didn’t much care about his parents at the moment. If they were upset, they’d just have to deal with it.

  I tucked my arm through Richard’s and we joined the party. Sparky had indeed outdone herself, filling the club with mounds of flowers—over the mantel was a cascade of white orchids so enormous it must have defoliated an entire tropical island, and the centerpieces on the dinner tables were small gardens of gerbera daisies surrounded by picket fences. Peter Duchin was playing the piano at top speed and talking at the top of his voice to some old friend or other from the Gulf Stream Club.

  We said hello to our friends and finally made it through the crowd to Richard’s parents, who, while not exactly effusive, were certainly warmer than the last time I’d seen them. Once the perfunctory greetings were out of the way, Richard deserted me almost immediately for a conversation about grazing fees and water rights with his father, my father, and the governor. I was stranded with his mother.

  “I’m so glad your brother is so much better,” Mrs. Jerome said. She had a very long, thin face, the longest neck I’ve ever seen in my life, and very high eyebrows, and when she pulled them all up at the same time, I felt as if I was about to have my eyes pecked out by a jeweled whooping crane. I tried to picture her in bed with Dean Martin. It would have made me want to shriek with laughter if her eyes hadn’t been cauterizing my face like Flash Gordon’s death rays. “We haven’t really gotten to know him well, or you either, for that matter. You’re always rushing off somewhere. I was concerned you might not make it this evening. You have such an exciting career.”

  “Mrs. Jerome,” I said. This was ridiculous. I was nervous, my hands were sopped and shaking, my mouth was dry. “I want you to know something. I absolutely adore your son, and I’m going to take such good care of him that he’ll think he lives in heaven. Believe me, it’s not always like this.”

  “I know, dear.” Her tone was unsure. “Richard has never been so happy nor looked so well in his life. It’s just all so different from what we’re accustomed to, but Dick and I are thrilled for both of you.”

  “Well, you sure don’t act like it,” I snapped. I’m sorry, but I was really tired and didn’t have time to break her down one teaspoonful of sugar at a time. This conversation was long past due. I had to establish my relationship with this woman now or I’d be forever doomed, and I wasn’t going to be browbeaten and intimidated. Life was too short. This was it. “All you do is frown at me. I’m actually a very nice person who happens to be going through a sort of rough, complicated patch at the moment—which I admit is all my own fault; I know I shouldn’t have taken this case, but I did—and I need friends right now, not foes. You’re supposed to be here loving me, not marching around looking like you just ate a lemon.”

  Mrs. Jerome listened closely. People simply did not speak to her that way. This was a woman of power. But so was I. Her face betrayed nothing. I knew mine was red.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I’d stepped off the end of the board, and there was no crawling back. “But that’s the way it is. Right at the moment, you think you’d like a daughter-in-law you can mold and direct, someone who’ll convince your son to move back to Manhattan and have lunch at Mortimer’s and get involved in your charities. Well, he already tried that once, and it didn’t work out too well. And I’m nothing like that. I’m way too old to be anything but what I am—a cop from a good family. But I’m telling you, I’m going to be such a terrific daughter-in-law you won’t be able to get enough of me.”

  Everyone had drawn back, giving us plenty of room, and was ignoring us studiously. We were basically alone in this glittering crowd. Two wild sheep, dug in deep, about to smack our horns together.

  “I know, deep down, Alida, if you were really the type who wanted some garden-club-joining, muffin-baking, bridge-playing, madras-skirted matronette as a daughter-in-law, you wouldn’t have a son like Richard in the first place. He’d be in some country-club bar somewhere back East in Greenwich rolling dice for drinks instead of out West roping steers and running the opera.”

  Those eyebrows now quivered like batwings close to the chandelier, and I was afraid they were going to lift her right off the ground.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a chance. Come on along for the ride. We’ll have fun.”

  The standoff continued for what seemed forever. But there was one thing I knew from watching and listening to my mother and being her daughter: When it comes to relationships, decide what it is you want. If it’s respect you’re after, meet power with power. Backbone with backbone. Eye with eye. And courage with courage. If I were ever going to win Alida Jerome’s respect, I had to meet her head on. And even if she wouldn’t admit it, she knew it, too.

  I’d said my piece. Now all I could do was wait. It turned out to be only for a moment. I could tell she was thinking about what I’d said and using all her fortitude not to follow her first instinct: gather up her skirts and demand of her husband that she be taken home immediately. We looked into each other’s eyes. Her nostrils flared slightly. Frankly, if I’d been her, I would have smacked me in the face.

&nbs
p; “You know, I like you much better than you think I do. I always look like I’m frowning because I’m too vain to wear my glasses.” She put her hand on my cheek and studied my face. “But I’ve never known anyone quite like you before, never met quite such an independent spirit. Anyone quite so outspoken.” Her hand was gentle and cool. “We don’t exactly have people like you in New England.”

  “No kidding.” I took a huge gulp of my drink.

  “I’m beginning to see why Richard loves you so much.”

  “Ditto.”

  “And I’m absolutely mad for your mother.”

  We both drew in deep breaths, let the moment pass, and smiled at each other.

  “Let’s start over,” she said.

  I wanted to burst into tears.

  “Well, dear,” Alida continued, since tears would never do, “tell me, now that the killer has been caught, does that mean you’ll be able to relax and enjoy the next few days? It is your wedding, after all.”

  “You mean Kennedy McGee?” My pulse began to approach normal. Talking about work helped a lot. “I’ll tell you right now, he’s not the killer. The police want to believe he is because all the evidence adds up, but there’s a problem. He escaped this afternoon.”

  “Oh, goodness.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s not going to hurt anyone. He’s probably on some rich widow’s private jet right this minute sipping champagne and telling her whatever she wants to hear. Unfortunately, this case is far from over, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ride this horse all the way back to the barn.”

  “Who do you think did it?” By now she was becoming legitimately interested.

  I grinned and shook my head. “It’s a big mess. First I think it’s one person and then another.”

  My mother slipped her arm around my waist. I could tell it was her arm before I saw her, because she’s the only person in the world I know who wears Miss Balmain perfume. I kissed her cheek. It was soft as velvet. A wide collar of emeralds circled her neck and lay flat against the peach shantung of her evening gown. “I think I may have what’s known as a hot tip,” she told me.

  “Oh?”

  “Go look in the Buckhorn Room.” Mother winked as broadly as Charlie Chan’s Number One Son. “There are some people having dinner in there that I think you will find very interesting.”

  The Buckhorn Room is the discreet little dining room where members never, ever discuss what they’ve seen because it’s smoky and dark and you never can be totally sure if you’ve seen what you think you have, so you keep your mouth shut. You can practically get away with murder in there. The Buckhorn Room is a gleaming beacon of closemouthed clubdom.

  “Isn’t it against the rules to see anything in there?” I asked.

  “I believe we need to disregard the rules from time to time. Don’t you agree, Alida?”

  “Completely.”

  “All right. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t you worry about your daughter?” I heard Mrs. Jerome ask as I left the ballroom.

  “What good would it do?” my mother answered.

  I crossed the lobby and headed down the carpeted hall, past glass-fronted cabinets packed with tarnished golf trophies and color portraits of club champions decked out in a variety of sportswear and holding a variety of athletic equipment: tennis rackets, drivers, putters, bows and quivers, ice skates and hockey sticks. At the end of the gallery, just before I turned to go into the Buckhorn Room, I glanced over my shoulder and caught my mother and Alida Jerome actually tiptoeing behind me. I put my finger to my lips, and they stopped and giggled. I knew Mrs. Jerome had never behaved like this in her life, with or without Dean Martin, and I had a feeling she also had never had so much fun.

  The room was almost empty, and murky as ever, but as my eyes adjusted, I squinted into the darkness. Back in the far corner I made out a seriously inebriated, very happy Duke Fletcher having a very public grope of Tiffany West, who had on a blunt-cut red wig with long, straight Yvette Mimieux bangs. Oh, well. He was a widower, after all, and if he got elected, it would be the first Republican presidency on the order of—and with all the excitement and verve and hog-wild copulation diplomacy of—the Kennedy-Johnson-Clinton years. Now those guys could get down and party. Big time.

  “Duke,” I said with a big smile. “Just the man I was looking for.”

  He turned his head in my direction, but his eyes couldn’t focus very well because Tiffany had sucked one of his fingers into her cherry-bomb lips like a piece of spaghetti. She opened her mouth, and his hand plopped onto the table.

  “Hell,” he said. “Don’t you ever take a break?”

  “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but I have just a couple more questions I needed to ask you. Tiffany, I think your lipstick is a little smeared. By the time you get back, I’ll be done.”

  “You run along, sugar,” he told his Amazon. “Big Duke’s got a little business to do, but I’ll be here when you get back.”

  She actually blew him a kiss.

  “I hear you were up talking to my housekeeper and the neighbors this afternoon.”

  “Is it true what she told me?”

  “About what?”

  “About that Alma used to beat up Wade.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I think it’s probably nothing but gossip. Wade’s always been a scrapper. Bar fights and so forth. I don’t think he’d take it from a woman, even one as big as Alma.”

  “Your housekeeper said Wade used to come over to your house and she’d patch him up.”

  “Never when I’ve been around.”

  “She also told me Mercedes used to come up and stay with Wade when Alma was out of town, and the three of you often had dinner and sometimes talked all night.”

  “So what if we did?”

  “Senator, did you and Wade and Mercedes conspire to murder Alma Rutherford Gilhooly?” It was an educated shot in the dark, and the reaction was disappointing.

  Duke looked at me with complete incredulity. I might as well have punched him in the solar plexus, his breath was so gone. “What in the world are you talking about?” he finally said.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I know I’m headed in the right direction. Sorry to interrupt.”

  The ladies were gone by the time I got back into the hall, but fortunately Richard was there. He had a big smile on his face.

  “What have you done to my mother?”

  “What?” I asked, thinking maybe she was missing. Or dead.

  “She’s acting like a complete fool.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted, all innocence.

  Well, at least I could take that problem off my list.

  THIRTY

  FRIDAY MORNING - SEPTEMBER 11

  Sunlight crept silently through the open doors, across the bedroom floor, up the side of the bed, and into our eyes, waking us with a start. I sat up and leaned across Richard to see the clock and then fell back into my pillows.

  “Can you believe we slept this late?” I said. “It’s ten of six.”

  “We needed it. The last couple of days have been killers.”

  Sparky and Tom Kendall do not speak to each other in the morning until each has been at his or her office for at least an hour. They get up, walk the dogs, have breakfast, watch the “Today” show, read the papers, shower, get dressed, and they don’t say a word. Even on their birthdays. They talk at night. We’re the opposite. Richard and I both wake up speaking in complete sentences. Just open our eyes and start yakking away.

  “I wonder how Elias is doing.” I dragged the phone off my bedside table and called the hospital.

  “He had a good night,” the duty nurse reported,

  “and has been awake since five-fifteen. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Sure.”

  The phone only rang a half. “Yo,” Elias answered. His voice sounded strong.

  “How’re you doin’, honey?”

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nbsp; “Fine, but I’ll tell you something, little sister. I don’t think I’m going to work for you anymore unless I start to get some hazardous-duty pay. Some kind of benefits. My leg is barely right from the accident down at the theater, and now I’ve just about gotten my arm shot off.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But I’m so glad you’re going to be all right.”

  Richard began kissing my neck, working his way across the top of my shoulder.

  “Hell, it’s not as bad as it sounded. I’ll still be able to sign checks and drink. I’m just waiting for the doctor to come in and tell me to go home. Now, did Linda tell me you went to Billings, or did I dream that?”

  “No, I went.” I was having trouble concentrating, because Richard had hooked his finger under the strap of my nightgown and slipped it slowly down my arm.

  “So you heard all about the Gilhoolys? About how she used to beat the daylights out of him? And how Mercedes used to visit whenever Alma was out of town?”

  “Yes.” I was having trouble getting my breath. Richard slowly lowered one side of my gown, the fine satin no more than a balmy breeze on my skin. “But I really think that’s nothing but gossip. The big problem is, Wade was in Billings when Alma was shot and Mercedes was in the powder room with Johnny Bourbon. And Duke Fletcher isn’t sure.”

  Satin slid up my legs and around my waist.

  “I know there’s a path to the truth, and I’m on it, but …”

  Richard pulled the phone from my hand and said into it. “Your sister has to go now.”