The Last Virginia Gentleman

by Michael Kilian

  He had also dedicated himself to the public service of his career, but, as he now realized, all those years were essentially pointless. He’d been a messenger. All he had done in his rendezvous with Mr. Kurosawa was bring the man a message, and a spurious one at that. Moody hadn’t even accorded him the courtesy of acknowledging the deed, let alone thank him for it. He’d simply been dismissed, like a waiter who had nothing more to bring.

  He had nothing more to bring to anyone.

  Faced with the emptiness of his life, his cousin Jack had turned to drink and bitterness. Showers had dutifully accepted the void, without recourse to painkillers. He supposed his grandfather would be proud of him.

  May had gone to the movies with her agent, the only man she knew in Los Angeles who was straight and yet wouldn’t try to go to bed with her, although he’d attempted that once or twice in the beginning. The film, a sneak preview, was awful, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, together again, in roles far too young for them and far too demanding of their talents. May would have torn up her audience survey form were it not for her superstitious feeling that the fates would not look kindly on such a spiteful act. In her own last picture, she’d been attacked by giant slugs that had left slimy trails all over her body. The fact that the director had once won an Oscar, and that the story was based on an old French horror tale, had not lessened the indignity. She wrote something generous on the form and dropped it in the box in the lobby.

  “You want a drink?” her agent asked.

  “A Coke.”

  “I need a real drink after that garbage. You want to drive up the PCH?”

  Her agent lived on the Pacific Coast Highway in Topanga Beach, the closest he could afford to Malibu with clients on May’s present level.

  “No. There’s a restaurant I like near my new place. Il Cielo. It has an outdoor terrace. We can look at the moon.”

  When May had moved from her big house in Malibu Canyon, she had taken a small apartment on Burton Way right on the Beverly Hills–Los Angeles line. It was a six months’ lease that would be up in October. Things might be much different then.

  Her agent had a Mercedes convertible, also leased. She wondered why anyone in Los Angeles bothered taking title to any possession. Things were always being bought and sold, people moving up, moving down, success following failure, and failure success. Her own car, left that night at the curb outside her building, was a banged-up old Volkswagen convertible she had bought when she’d first become a big star in hopes it would keep people from recognizing her. Its anonymity served her as well in failure as in success.

  As they drove by it, something about it caught her attention. She glanced back as they continued down the street, but the nature of the distraction now eluded her. The car seemed all right. It was parked exactly where she had left it.

  At the restaurant, they took a table outside, by the hedge that separated the establishment from the sidewalk. It was laced with small Italian lights, making her think of Christmas. A torch set on a cast-iron rod flickered nearby.

  There was a violinist at Il Cielo, a long-haired fellow dressed all in black named David Wilson. He looked New Age, but his music was lush and pure and sweet, especially when he played “You Are Too Beautiful,” which seemed to be his theme. He turned to it again when he noticed her enter, as he had done on several nights. It was far too romantic for someone as lonely as she now felt.

  “You sure you want to do this?” her agent asked.

  “Stick with Coca-Cola? You’re damned right.”

  “No, I mean go back to Washington. All that Shakespeare shit.”

  “Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer do Shakespeare.”

  “Between movies.”

  “You don’t like fifteen percent of six hundred a week.”

  He made a face. “Universal’s casting that Kevin Costner ripoff Indian flick. You’d be perfect. All that long black hair.”

  “I’d get three scenes, right? Carrying firewood, fucking the male lead under a bearskin in the firelight, and running around the teepees screaming during the massacre.”

  “It might be a big hit.”

  “Into the video stores in two weeks. And I probably wouldn’t get the part. There are an awful lot of actresses not getting work in this town. God, I saw Elizabeth McGovern at an audition last month.”

  “I’m just afraid if you go out there, you won’t come back.”

  “I’ll come back. I’m not ready for retirement yet. Not on these terms.”

  “You going to see your father?”

  “I told you. I already saw him when I was out there to sign the contract. It was horrible.”

  “No. I mean, are you going to get together with him again?”

  “I think I told you that, too. Hell, no.”

  “Your stepmother called me today. I wasn’t going to tell you. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  The night air seemed suddenly cold. “What was supposed to be a surprise?”

  “She’s writing you a letter. I gave her your address.”

  May closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she leaned back and looked up at the moon. It seemed close enough to touch, but so impassive, almost forbidding.

  “I told you not to do that,” she said. “For anyone.”

  “Hell, babe, it’s your family.”

  “That woman is not my family.”

  She sipped her soft drink, but suddenly it tasted flat and metallic. She supposed anything that touched her lips at that moment would.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go home.”

  He dropped her by the walkway that led to her building’s glass-doored entrance. As he roared off back toward Santa Monica Boulevard, she hesitated, and looked at her car again. What had caught her eye before was now very obvious. The interior light was on. The curbside door was hanging slightly open.

  Swearing, she hurried up to it. She was about to slam the door shut, when she noticed the litter on the floormat—registration, insurance card, some old repair bill receipts, a small box of Kleenex. Her glove compartment lid was hanging open. Swearing more, she jammed the papers back inside and closed the door. Nothing seemed to be missing. The trunk was still locked.

  Her building, a small Art Deco construction with curved corners and glass-tile borders, contained only four apartments. There was no doorman. She ascended the stairs to her door slowly, preparing to run down again at the slightest sound.

  The door was closed and locked. Opening it slowly, she gasped.

  Everything was in disarray. All her desk drawers had been pulled out. So had those in the kitchen. Her bedroom looked like a store after a clearance sale, with her underwear scattered all over the floor. They’d found the hiding place where she’d put some of the jewelry she’d taken out of her safety deposit box. Her emerald necklace and earrings were missing. So was her strand of fake pearls.

  May sank down on her bed and shuddered, then snatched up the phone and called the police—not that it would do any good. This was another omen. She had to get out of L.A.

  Seven

  In Dandytown, religion generally was something decided by one’s ancestors. The Fairbrothers, Alixe Percy, and most of the Dandytown gentry were the Episcopalians their grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers had been. The Showerses had for generations been the town’s leading Presbyterians. David’s father, despite his exuberant fondness for the community’s traditional sins, had served as an elder, as his father and other forebears had done.

  The church of the Bonning clan was Baptist. They attended it infrequently, and in meager numbers, but a funeral for one of their own drew them all out. Some twenty-five Bonnings and relations now stood around the grave site as the preacher intoned his familiar phrases. Vicky’s mother was the only one of them crying, but then her daughter had been bringing tears to her eyes for the better part of her life.

  Meade Clay’s people, North Carolinians, were not present. They had taken his body back to their home
land like a reclaimed possession, relieved that death had at last separated him from his notorious wife.

  The red brick church stood on a hillside north of Dandytown, overlooking the two-lane highway that led to Berryville. The churchyard spread up the hill behind it, reaching into the shelter of several large, leafy oaks. The graves were mostly grouped in clumps, family by family, but a few were scattered on their own.

  The view was of the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, its summit line soft in the summery haze. The beginnings of afternoon thunderheads were visible rising farther to the west, but here the sun was bright. Were it not for the occasion, it would have been a most pleasant and cheerful day.

  There were few outsiders present—two or three of Vicky’s fellow riders, some grooms and walkers, the bartender from the inn. Vicky’s employer, Bernard Bloch, wasn’t there, of course, nor was anyone representing him. Instead, he’d sent flowers.

  Showers and Becky stood quietly at some distance from the others, as far as they could get from Becky’s estranged husband, Billy Bonning, who kept giving them nasty looks. There were rumors that Billy had already picked up another woman—wealthy, ugly, and fifteen years older than he—someone from Charlottesville.

  Becky was there only because Showers had insisted on coming. He had just driven in from Washington, stopping at his farm only to drop his bags and pick up Becky, who could just as easily have done without witnessing the laying of Vicky into the ground. Showers had not asked her to accompany him to the funeral, but he’d made it seem such an obligation for himself that Becky was reluctant to stay behind. She shifted her weight impatiently from foot to foot, brushing flies from her face, wishing all concerned would hurry.

  The funeral was not without a mysterious moment. During the Bible reading, Showers sensed some movement behind him and glanced back down the hill to see Lenore Fairbrother, hatless and wearing a summer print sundress, perched like a mischievous ghost on a tombstone, smoking a cigarette. When he looked again a few minutes later, she was gone. Sometime after that, he saw her Jaguar speeding away on the two-lane below, heading back to Dandytown. Lenore had not liked Vicky Clay. Though they’d been tempted by many of the same sins, Lenore found her crass and vulgar, lacking taste and style. They’d sometimes quarreled in the bar of the Dandytown Inn. At least twice, Lenore had had Vicky thrown out. Perhaps this was her way of seeing to it for good.

  Showers stared sadly as they lowered the casket into the grave. He had long held the hope that whatever dreadful inner fires had been tormenting the girl would burn themselves out, leaving her free to find a more peaceful way through life. But she’d never found that deliverance, nor even sought it.

  He’d liked her. His family had treated her like trash, but when Vicky had been younger, a fresh-faced, spunky, pretty teenager winning firsts and best-in-shows all over the county, he’d found her appealing, full of promise, if only her wildness could be tamed. He’d tried to make a protégée of her, as he had with Becky, but it hadn’t taken. As fiercely demanding as she had been as a trainer, Vicky was herself untamable, utterly lacking in self-discipline. It was as if she had been born with a genetic deficiency. In the end, there was nothing to be done about it—one could only watch it run its course.

  Now she lay in a box in a hole, with clods of Virginia soil pattering down upon her—God taking back a mistake.

  Showers forced himself to think about the horses she had killed. He could imagine them stacked in a great heap that would overwhelm the little grave. In every irony, there was justice.

  The ceremony ended awkwardly, with the minister running out of words. After an uncomfortable silence, people began to move about, unsure of what to do next. When it was clear that the formal proceedings were over, Showers went dutifully to pay his respects and condolences to Vicky’s mother, who received him coldly.

  Sheriff Cooke and Wayne Bensinger, the assistant commonwealth attorney, had also come to the church, but hung back by the parking area, making clear that they had not come as mourners. As people began returning to their cars, Showers found the sheriff waiting for him by the Jeep.

  “A moment of your time, Captain Showers?” said the sheriff. He was out of uniform, dressed in an ill-fitting tan suit and maroon tie.

  Showers nodded, and limped along with Cooke to a rail fence. There were cows in the pasture on the other side, standing or lying about beneath a large-branched oak.

  “Too bad the funeral had to be delayed so long,” the sheriff said. “But we couldn’t release the body until we got a final autopsy report. Someone lost that first lab test and they had to go back for more tissue.”

  “I’m sure the family understood,” Showers said.

  “You heard about the results?”

  Showers nodded. Becky had told him all about it on the way out to the churchyard. Showers gathered that no one in Dandytown was talking about anything else. “Horrible way to die.”

  “Why would he use a drug like that on her?” the sheriff asked.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it was all Meade had at hand.”

  “He sure didn’t like her very much. The pathologist said she lived for more than an hour after getting hit with that shot.”

  “It’s very sad.”

  The sheriff looked away, scratching his nose. Bensinger was out of earshot.

  “The inquest is scheduled for Monday,” the sheriff said, finally. “It won’t take long. It’s pretty open and shut. Murder-suicide. Had one of those fifteen, twenty years ago—down in Edgarsburg. Only that was gunshots.”

  “I remember it.”

  “Like I say, Captain, won’t take long. We took statements from just about everyone in town. Got everybody who was at the inn when it happened. Except you.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been in Washington.”

  “Yes sir. I understand. You’re a busy man these days.”

  “Would you like me to testify at the inquest? I’m supposed to be back in Washington Monday. They’re expecting a Senate committee vote this week on the treaty I’ve been working on. But this certainly takes precedence.”

  “We don’t want to keep you away from important business, Captain. But I need to get some kind of statement on the record, since you did show up at the inn later. And you did know the victims. I’ve got to file a report with the state police, and I don’t want to leave anyone out.”

  “Whatever I can do to help.”

  The sheriff took a small tape recorder from his pocket and turned it on, holding it between them.

  “Captain Showers. Can you account for your time between five and nine o’clock the day of the incident?”

  Becky was standing nearby, watching them intently.

  “Yes. I was at the steeplechase course, in the jockey tent. I’d been given a painkiller after I took a fall in one of the races and it made me sleepy. I didn’t want to drive until it wore off, so I lay down for a while.”

  “Did anyone see you there?”

  “Yes. Jimmy Kipp was still there, and I think another rider. At least when I went to sleep. When I left, there were still some grooms around.”

  “You were seen talking to Vicky Clay before she came back to the inn. What was that about?”

  “It was a personal matter, Sheriff.”

  “She’s dead, Captain.”

  Showers frowned. “Does this have to be on the record.”

  “Put it however you want.”

  “I believe the young lady felt some attraction to me. She made a proposal I felt obliged to decline.”

  The sheriff grinned. Damned few men in Dandytown had declined Vicky Clay’s “proposals.”

  “Do you know anyone who might have had a grudge against the Clays? Somebody who might really have had it in for them?”

  At one time or another, that would have included much of the county.

  “You said murder-suicide.”

  “That’s the way it looks, but I’ve got to cover all the bases.”

  “Sheriff, I don’t know anyone,
no one in Dandytown, certainly, capable of anything like this.”

  “Uh, one more thing, Captain. Meade Clay worked on your horses. Was he left-handed or right-handed?”

  “As I recall, he was left-handed.” Showers shrugged. “He may have been ambidextrous, but when he did sketches of horses for Coggins reports, he used his left.”

  The sheriff clicked off the little machine. “Well, okay. Thank you very much.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes sir. Just wanted to complete the record. Sorry to bother you out here.”

  “I would have been happy to go to your office.”

  “Oh, I expected you’d be here. I was kinda curious as to who else might turn up. Should have known it would only be you and Becky, except for all the Bonnings.”

  The sheriff must have seen Lenore. Showers let that pass.

  “Sheriff, do you have doubts that Meade killed Vicky and then took his own life?”

  “I don’t, no. Like I say, I’m just covering all the bases. I think we can close the case all right. But if the state police have any more questions, I want to make sure I’ve got everything on the record. Have a good day now.”

  When he and Bensinger had started toward their car, Becky came up to Showers, looking quite worried.

  “What was that about, David?”

  “He’s just doing his job. Some questions about Vicky.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “Where I was when Vicky died.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth.”

  Becky took his hand. “Let’s go home.

  Returning to his farm, Showers went directly to the stables without stopping to change clothes. Becky and Alixe had kept him informed of Moonsugar’s progress by telephone, but he’d found it difficult to believe the horse had recovered as well as they had said. In the first few days, he had expected the worst possible news every time the phone had rung.