Nothing but Gossip

by Marne Davis Kellogg

  Duke, who’d sifted through Alma’s blood-soaked past, somehow kept dredging up nice things to say. “Alma was such a philanthropist. Her generosity to Johnny Bourbon’s Christian Cowboys was well known—”

  “Amen,” Johnny called.

  “—as was her generosity to many other causes.” Wisely, Duke realized the only other causes she was generous to were right-wing nutballs. He couldn’t come out and name the Wyoming Militia because, as any savvy politician knows these days, you don’t ever say a word you don’t want repeated on the six-o’clock news with all the modifiers deleted.

  I sat and watched and listened patiently, taking advantage of the time to pull myself together. I had no intention of making an arrest during the funeral service itself, because that would be regarded as very bad form. Unless there’s reason, like the alleged perpetrator tries to escape or grab a hostage or commit another crime, it just isn’t done. In this instance, I was fairly secure in the knowledge that our guy wasn’t going anywhere and that we could wait until Alma’d been committed fair and square to what I feared was going to turn out to be hell, and then I could step in and take him on his way out.

  Things, of course, never go according to plan. Never. And unfortunately, as Duke scratched up more fool’s gold from under the various ignominious rocks of Alma’s life, Wade became more and more bored and started to squirm and decided he’d turn around and talk to his best bud, Jerry Pierce, the golfer from Billings who had the Rottweiler named Gut. That’s when he saw me. All the color drained from his face, and his head turned from side to side as police officers stepped into sight at each one of the exit doors.

  Now it was going to get messy. Damn.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Wade turned back to me and we stared at each other, then his eyes darted around the room, searching for escape. I rose to my feet and headed slowly down the side aisle. So far, no one else knew what was happening, and then my mother looked up and saw me.

  “Lilly Bennett,” she scolded. “Where in the world have you been? Do you have any idea what time it is? What in heaven’s name has happened to your suit? It’s completely wrecked.”

  “Later, Mother,” I cut her off. “This is business.”

  Wade looked ready to make a move, and I was trying to get to the end of his row before he did.

  “Believe me,” she apologized to Alida for my behavior, “she’s not always like this.”

  “I think she’s absolutely divine.”

  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Alida, honey, I thought.

  When Johnny saw the armed police officers at all his cathedral’s exits, his reaction verged on hysteria. His panicky eyes—so big it seemed only the whites were visible, like Daniel’s in Raphael’s painting of Daniel meeting the lions for the first time—darted around the room and then, like Daniel, he dropped to his knees at the edge of the stage, raised his arms to the sky, and screamed, “Dear Lord, Dear Lord, have mercy. Have mercy.”

  If seeing armed officers induced this reaction, especially knowing what I knew—that they weren’t there for him—I supposed Johnny’s prison experience must have been extra bad, worse than he ever let on. Shanna knelt quickly beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, comforting him.

  The whole tableau was totally biblical—these two were loaded with forgiveness, and frankly, the way they lived, they needed to be—and if I’d had more time I would have stopped to admire them.

  “Don’t worry, darlin’,” she cooed, stroking his cheek. The eagle-down on her cuff brushed his face like a powder puff. “You haven’t done a thing wrong. They can’t be here because of anything you’ve done. Isn’t that so, Lilly?” She looked at me, as I drew closer and I could tell she was afraid.

  “Shanna’s right,” I answered, not taking my eyes off Wade. “I’m not here for you.”

  I reached the far end of Wade’s row and he darted out, leaving his cane on the floor, and took refuge behind Alma’s casket. Only the top of his head and his frightened eyes were visible over the roses through the fence of gladiolus spears.

  “Now, Wade,” I said, “let’s just do this quietly.”

  Duke never moved. Not a bristle out of place. He stood righteously, statuelike, at the podium, furious he’d been interrupted. “What in the devil is going on here? This is a funeral, for God’s sake. Have you no sense of propriety, Miss Bennett? You’re the biggest troublemaker I’ve ever known.”

  I started toward Wade. Our eyes were locked together.

  “And where’s Mercedes?” Duke asked. “She told me she was meeting with you.”

  “That’s a good question, Duke,” I said. “Why don’t you tell him where Mercedes is, Wade?”

  Suddenly I saw a tiny flash of light on what looked like a silver gun barrel, and I guess everyone else saw it, too, because there were some shrieks, but nobody left. They all fell to their knees and peeked over the tops of the pew backs. Their heads looked like ducks in a shooting gallery.

  “Put the gun down, Wade.”

  “Don’t anybody come near me or I’ll shoot. I haven’t done anything.” He pointed the gun directly at my forehead and his eyes flew wildly around the church.

  “Put the weapon down and we’ll talk about it.” I kept walking slowly toward him. I could feel the whole room holding its breath.

  “I’ll shoot.”

  “No you won’t. You shoot me right now, you’ll get the chair. So far you’re just facing one charge of murder one and four attempted murders. You kill me, a federal officer, you’re in deep shit.”

  Wade licked his dry lips and dug one of his hands into the roses. He kept the six-shooter on my face.

  “You know we can still use the chair in Wyoming,” I said. My heart was beating so fast it felt as if I had a ticker-tape machine in my chest. It was just Wade and me in the room, eye to eye across the top of his wife’s casket. “I read about a fellow recently whose face caught on fire and part of his head exploded when they threw the switch—and he still wasn’t dead. He was screaming like hell. Imagine it hurt like the dickens. Just think, that could be you, Wade. Put down the gun.”

  But instead of dropping the weapon, he turned the casket and began to roll it up the aisle with one hand while waving the gun around with the other. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Anybody tries to stop me,” he yelled. “I’ll shoot Bennett.”

  I stayed on the other side of the rolling bier, and he was really getting it going pretty good, picking up speed. So much for whatever his illness was, I thought. I guessed he was well, because the thing was starting to cruise like a bat out of hell and I was having to run to keep up. At least the speed made it hard for him to keep the gun aimed, and I thought, Jesus, he could keep on like this all the way to Nebraska if somebody doesn’t do something. Why don’t they just close the goddamn doors? But everyone was merely watching us open-mouthed, and I was too winded to yell.

  Finally I sucked up every bit of energy I had left and heaved myself across the top of the pile of flowers. I grabbed for his tie and yanked as hard as I could. And what happened was, he and I both came to a screeching halt as the casket shot out from under me and I landed flat on my stomach on the blanket of roses with Wade flat on his back next to me, the gun long gone, spinning away out of reach beneath the pews. I jumped with both knees onto his belly, jerked my handcuffs out from the back of my skirt, and slapped those suckers on him so fast he didn’t know if he was up or back.

  “Where’d you get those?” he squeaked out, incredulous.

  “You did a crappy job of frisking me, you stupid bastard,” I said as I tugged him to his feet and smacked the other cuff onto the brass railing of Alma’s casket.

  “Wade Gilhooly.” My voice was suddenly strong. If I’d ever felt sorry for him, all that sympathy had evaporated during this little joyride. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Alma Rutherford Gilhooly and for the multiple attempted murders of Jim Dixon, Elias Bennett, Mercedes Rutherford, and me, Marshal Lilly Bennett. You have the r
ight to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. Any questions?”

  I wanted to kick him in the leg, just the way Linda had.

  “How’d you get out of the car?” He still could not believe what was happening, still thought his macho Irish bad-boy charm could rescue him.

  “You have a way of underestimating women, Mr. Gilhooly,” I said. “Why did you hire me in the first place? Why not just let the police department handle it?”

  “I thought you’d stop at McGee. You had enough clues and enough evidence to sink a ship.”

  Lieutenant Evan unhitched the cuff from the casket, turned Wade around, locked his wrists together behind his back, and escorted him to the door.

  “You picked the wrong girl,” I said to his back.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Everyone followed us out of the cathedral, evidently leaving Alma for later, because just before I exited, I looked over my shoulder and saw people, my mother and Alida Jerome leading the pack, tromping through the flowers and shouldering past the deceased as though her large casket were simply something in the way. At least it wasn’t spinning.

  “Why did you do all this?” I asked Wade before Evan guided him into the backseat of Jack’s sedan. The bewildered mourners, if that’s what you could call them, formed a semicircle around us, with Jerry Pierce and Wade’s banged-up executive Jim Dixon slightly closer.

  Some of the angry red had drained from Wade’s face, leaving it blotchy and fearful. He stared at my shoes. “You probably won’t believe me, but I’m sorry I tried to kill you and Elias and Mercedes. I’m not sorry I killed Alma, though. I couldn’t take it anymore. She deserved it. I did it out of self-defense.”

  “Self-defense? Try again.”

  He ignored my question, saying instead, “Why didn’t you just stick with McGee?”

  “Because he didn’t do it.”

  “He’s done worse. He has a lot to pay for.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “But you did all this.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Well,” I stopped to organize my thoughts and looked around the crowd, enjoying my moment. I saw Jack look at his watch, which made me enjoy it even more. “I didn’t know for sure until this morning, and then two things happened: First of all, the disappearing flight attendant, who”—I turned to the door to see if she’d made an appearance, which she hadn’t—“who I believe will tell us you were not the man on the Frontier flight from Billings last Sunday night. That it was your vice-president Jim Dixon, who often traveled in your stead. Isn’t that so, Mr. Dixon?”

  I stared at the Gilhooly GMC executive who’d been at Wade’s house the morning I was there and who had crashed and totally demolished his Seville on the way back into town. His face, still bruised and swollen from having the air bag explode into it and practically permanently embed his glasses into his eye sockets, revealed nothing. Even with the bruises, his similarity to Wade was remarkable.

  “You knew I was outside your study door, didn’t you Wade? That’s why the conversation with Mr. Dixon was so stilted. And after you’d watched him pour a highball glass of straight vodka—presumably the first of several, judging by his blood alcohol at the time of the accident—and excused yourself to get your briefcase, you did something to his car. Am I right?”

  “He didn’t do anything to my car,” Jim Dixon said defensively. “He was only gone for a minute or two.”

  “Wade?”

  Wade stared at him and me defiantly. I got the feeling that if his hands hadn’t been cuffed behind his back, he would have given us both the finger.

  “He loosened your brake lines and disconnected the warning light. He knew you’d get two or three good applications out of it, enough to get you onto the freeway before the brakes went completely.”

  “Is that true?” Dixon asked.

  Wade just ignored him.

  “You son of a bitch,” Dixon said, his voice was quiet, awestruck. “After all I’ve done for you.” He looked completely dumbfounded. “I’ve covered up for you a million times. You son of a bitch.”

  “I’ve covered for you a few times myself,” Wade countered defensively. “Like most mornings when you’re too hung over to work.”

  “Yeah. But I’ve never tried to kill you. You bastard. You actually tried to murder me.” The enormity of this fact seemed to be sinking in. He faced me. “You’ve got it right, Miss Bennett: I was on the plane pretending to be Wade the night Alma was shot. I stood in for him all the time. Wade Gilhooly never left town at all—said he wanted to spend a quiet Sunday evening with Tiffany.”

  “I was at the home with my grandmother,” Tiffany spoke quickly to Dwight.

  “I know. Wade just didn’t think we’d ever follow it so far,” I said. “You hid in Alma’s dressing room and shot her, Wade. And then you tried to kill Elias because you were afraid he’d found out about the sabotage on the car.”

  Wade leaned against the police cruiser and watched his toe move a pebble.

  “Don’t you want to get a lawyer or something, man?” I heard Jerry ask him.

  “What the hell difference will it make?” Wade said.

  “You’re entitled,” I said. “We can stop anytime you like.”

  Wade didn’t answer.

  I continued. “Today it all became completely clear when I walked into your study. Last Sunday, when Alma took me on a tour of the house, all the TV screens in your study were on ESPN. I never made the connection that they were also hooked up to the security system, that each screen was attached to a camera somewhere in your house or on your property.”

  “So?” Wade might have been down, but he was not out, at least as far as he was concerned.

  “I realized you knew I was standing outside the door the whole time, and you tailored your conversation with Jim. You’d probably intended to shoot him right on the spot, right then, but I forced you to change your plan.”

  Wade nodded. I could tell he was thinking.

  “What I don’t understand, Wade, is why. Why didn’t you just get a divorce? Why did you go to all this trouble with the Russians and, my God, trying to kill my brother and Mercedes and me? Why?”

  “Because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

  “What do you mean, believe you?”

  “I know this sounds crazy, but the truth is, I did kill Alma out of self-defense, and then it seemed like if I did just one other thing, everything else would be covered up and it would all go away.”

  “What do you mean, self-defense?”

  His eyes darted around the crowd. “This is hard for me to talk about. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Try,” I said, maybe a little sarcastically.

  “Alma used to beat me up.” Wade said this so quietly we could scarcely hear him.

  “Excuse me,” I shouted. “I can’t hear you.”

  Wade looked at me and he hated my guts, but I didn’t give a damn because he was a one-man, fumbling, out-of-control crime wave. I didn’t care if he was a great guy everybody loved, he’d murdered his wife, shot my brother, and given me the biggest headache I’d ever had in my life. I had a lump on the back of my head the size of a baseball.

  “All the black eyes and broken ribs, they weren’t from bar fights. They were from Alma.”

  “Hey, man,” Jerry said. “You don’t have to tell all this stuff.”

  “No. I want to. See this scar on my neck? The one I said I got from Vietnam? The truth is, Alma threw boiling water on me one time. Another time she picked me up and threw me across the room like a sack of flour. Okay”—Wade drew in his breath—“I could take all that. I’d learned to live with it. But a month or so ago, I started getting sick, and I realized Alma was poisoning me, and somehow she still is. I’m just getting sicker and sicker, and I don’t know what’s causing it. But I swear to God, it’s something she’s done to my food or water or something.”

  “Well, for goodness’
sake,” my mother said. “Why didn’t you just go to a doctor?”

  “Mother,” I said. “Stay out of this.”

  “I did, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Said it was just flu. I’ll tell you another thing: Whatever weird African juice she’s using on me, she used the same thing on her parents.”

  Whoa. “Alma poisoned her parents?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Jack and I exchanged glances.

  “But why’d you have to go and shoot Elias?” I asked. “That was completely uncalled-for.”

  “Because it was the perfect final setup for McGee. He was there. I had his gun. I didn’t try to kill Elias; I just wanted to injure him. And then, when they arrested McGee, it was perfect, but then the idiots let him escape.”

  Jack’s face visibly reddened.

  “I don’t think Chief Lewis cottons much to being called an idiot,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Wade mumbled.

  “What did you do to Mercedes this morning, you little peckerheaded pipsqueak?” Duke broke from the crowd and thundered into Wade’s face. He’d balled his big hand into a fist. “What did she ever do to you except be your friend? Always rushing up there to hold your hand.”

  “Well, she was holding your hand plenty, too,” Wade gave a little back. He might have been sick as a dog, but he was not going gently into anybody’s good night. Not by a long shot. He was a tough little bastard.

  “That’s none of your damn business.” Duke drew back and would have knocked all Wade’s teeth down his throat if Jack hadn’t grabbed his arm.

  “She called me last night and said if I didn’t turn myself in, she’d call the police. I panicked. I didn’t mean for all this to happen. Shit, I practically killed myself this morning, jumping off her balcony.”

  Jack stepped forward. “Party’s over.”

  Lieutenant Evan put his hand on Wade’s head and shoved him into the squad.