The Last Virginia Gentleman

by Michael Kilian

  “That may not be so easy. I mean, it’ll take a little more time.”

  “You’ve got a lot of money, Mr. Bloch, but you don’t have a lot of time. Or a lot of smarts. If you can’t take care of this, then we will. We don’t want to, but that’s what we’ll do. We’ve got to protect our investment.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Not okay. I think our partnership’s going to have to be dissolved. That’s too bad, but it isn’t working out, is it? Maybe you’re not cut out for this kind of business. For the world of sport. Not this sport, anyway. Maybe you should have bought yourself a ball team.”

  Bloch suddenly felt as though his office had been turned into a freezer. He couldn’t bring himself to speak.

  “It would be best, you know,” said the voice on the other end, “all the way around, if we dissolved the partnership on friendly terms. You agree?”

  “I agree.”

  “Good. You see to it.”

  Fifteen

  Spencer’s bureau chief, surprised and pleased to see his defrocked columnist adapting to his lowly new status well enough to be showing some initiative, readily agreed to his idea for a feature story on the Virginia horse country, provided Spencer work in something about Elizabeth Taylor’s time there as mistress of then husband Senator John Warner’s big Middleburg horse farm. The editor even suggested a sidebar for the sports wire on steeplechasing, and another for travel sections on country inns in the area.

  Spencer devoted his first day to Middleburg and Upperville, where he dug up a few colorful anecdotes about Warner and Liz and established himself as nothing more suspicious than a writer after a feature story. The next day he went to Dandytown. Alixe Percy was as helpful as Showers had promised, especially after Spencer happily joined her in a couple of glasses of Virginia Gentleman. She put him in touch with several of the more notable horse people in the community, and they were all genuinely hospitable to him when he came to call on them. Spencer had long experience at eliciting information in the process of idle conversation—a skill he’d used effectively with IRA Provos and El Salvadoran military officers alike.

  The horse folk were most garrulous on the subject of Vicky Clay. She seemed as much a topic of gossip dead as she had been alive. He learned that she was widely considered to have been at least the part-time mistress of her employer, Bernard Bloch, but had slept around with a large number of other men, concentrating her attentions in recent weeks on the rich and famous who gathered in Dandytown for the steeplechase and horse show season. He was also told that she had talked to friends about divorcing her husband, Meade, and seemed to be looking for a way to get herself out of Dandytown and into a more comfortable situation—though no one Spencer talked to could imagine what civilized person, however sex crazed, could long abide the girl.

  The person who knew the most about Vicky Clay, Spencer was told, was the young woman who had long been her closest friend, her sister-in-law Becky Gibbons Bonning, but Showers had asked him to stay away from her.

  After lunch in the Dandytown Inn, where his waitress was more than happy to describe the murder-suicide scene as the maid and desk clerk had discovered it, Spencer stopped by the offices of the local weekly newspaper. They let him look through their files of back copies, ostensibly to review their stories on the Valley Dragoon Chase weekend, but he managed also to take ample notes from their accounts of Vicky’s death and the subsequent investigation and inquest proceedings.

  His next stop was the sheriff’s office adjoining the county courthouse, where he received a much less warm welcome. Spencer kept to his cover story—just doing a feature on the horse country—but said the murder-suicide and the community’s reaction to it was a damned interesting episode, and certainly something he couldn’t leave out.

  “It’s old news,” the sheriff said. “The case is closed, mister. The papers out here wrote it all up anyway. We don’t have anything new to add.”

  “Couldn’t I look through the case file? It wouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

  “Hell, no, you can’t look through it. I don’t know how you people do things back in Washington but you can’t come out here and start rummaging through our files. I don’t even know who you are?”

  Spencer showed him his U.S. Capitol press pass.

  “This isn’t the Congress.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m an accredited journalist and your files are public record.”

  “They’re official law enforcement records. If you want to get a writ, go ahead and try, but I don’t think you’ll get very far. I thought you were writing about horses?”

  “Horses. Drugs. Dead bodies. All part of the local color, it seems.”

  “Good day to you, Mr. Spencer. We’ve got police work to do here.”

  He went to the door, holding it open.

  Spencer didn’t want to waste time. His bureau chief had assigned him to cover the state dinner for the president of Mexico at the White House that night, and it was a long drive back. But he lingered in town long enough to pay one more visit, one Showers had suggested, to the assistant commonwealth attorney who’d worked on the case, a man named Wayne Bensinger. Showers had said he was young and inexperienced, but honest. A rich horsewoman he knew—Lenore Fairbrother—had once tried to get the man to fix a drunk-driving citation for her. The sheriff had agreed to try to get the charge dropped, but the case had already gotten onto the county court docket, so young Bensinger went ahead and prosecuted her. She was eventually acquitted for lack of evidence. The sheriff claimed he had misplaced the blood alcohol test results. But Showers had been impressed with the young man’s principles, and had interceded with Lynwood Fairbrother to prevent him from giving Bensinger any kind of hard time.

  It seemed worth the risk to drop some of the pretense about a feature story on horses and tell Bensinger his chief interest was the Vicky Clay murder. Spencer supposed the sheriff had already figured that much out. There was more plus than minus in revealing that he was Showers’ cousin as well. Word of that would get around sooner or later—the way these people loved to gossip, probably sooner.

  “No, the sheriff’s wrong,” Bensinger said, as they sat in his hot little office in the courthouse. “The case isn’t officially closed. It’s just inactive. The coroner’s jury finding was on the cause of death, which was by injection of etorphine. Murder-suicide was put down as the probable circumstance. Nothing else was indicated by the evidence. But Meade Clay wasn’t tried and found guilty. The law just made an assumption. If the sheriff turns up some new evidence, we’d open it up again.”

  “The sheriff doesn’t exactly seem disposed to do that.”

  Bensinger shrugged. “We don’t get many homicide cases out here. The sheriff did everything he could—he must have talked to half the people in the county—but I guess he’s just as happy not to have to mess with it anymore.”

  The prosecutor was sitting at his desk in shirtsleeves, his tan jacket hanging on the back of his chair looking wrinkled beyond hope of pressing. Spencer wondered if the man owned more than two suits.

  “The state police have looked into all this?”

  “Oh sure. I mean, they were on the scene during the investigation, and they have all the reports. My boss sent copies of everything to Richmond. But the principal jurisdiction is here.”

  “Why settle on murder-suicide?”

  “There were no witnesses to anything else. The hotel room door was locked. There was no access through the windows on that floor and no sign of a break-in. The victims’ prints were the only ones found on the two syringes that were used. Meade Clay had about every motive you could think of. And the means used—well, it would be unique to a veterinarian. Knowing the fatal dosage and everything.”

  “But in her case the dosage wasn’t immediately fatal. She died a couple hours after he did, right?”

  “Yes. It must have been horrible. Lying there completely paralyzed, with him dead beside her.”

  “Not completely paralyz
ed. She made a lot of scratches on his back. That’s what the papers said.”

  “We weren’t sure about those. The coroner said that happened while he was still alive. She had a reputation for being, I guess you could say, sexually active. They’d made love. Apparently just before he’d administered the drug.”

  Bensinger blinked amiably at him behind his thick glasses. Spencer had the odd feeling the young man was glad he was there.

  “My cousin David said you and the sheriff asked him whether Meade Clay was right-handed or left-handed. He said Clay was left-handed. Where did he inject himself, if that’s what he did?”

  “In the left shoulder. With his right hand. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Junkies inject themselves in all kinds of places. He was a cocaine addict. So was she.”

  “But that’s not how you take cocaine.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Spencer was tired. He wanted a drink. He had a long drive back to Washington and would have to make it a fast one if he was going to get into black tie in time to be at the White House for the guest arrivals. He was planning to come back to Dandytown in a few days anyway.

  But many things could change in a few days, including the prosecutor’s friendly, helpful mood.

  “You say there’s been no new evidence. Have you gone over the old evidence again?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. At least the transcript from the inquest. Nothing jumped out at me.”

  “Would you mind if I had a look?”

  Bensinger frowned. “I can’t let you do that. Regulations. You’d have to get permission from the court.”

  “You mean a judge?”

  “A judge. Or the court clerk.”

  “My cousin said there’s a judge here who’s an old friend of the family. Judge Merrick? Well, I’m family.”

  “He’ll be happy to see you, then.”

  Spencer looked at his watch. “I don’t have a lot of time. I have to be at the White House tonight.” He paused to let those two words work their magic. “Couldn’t we dispense with all the formalities, since all I want to do is look, and it’s public record anyway?”

  Bensinger bit his lip. “You’re going to do a story on this?”

  “If I do, our conversation today won’t be in it. You might say you have Captain Showers’ word on that.”

  More magic. “All right. Since you’re in a hurry, and Judge Merrick would probably let you do it anyway, I guess it’s okay. I’ve got the whole file right here. I’ve kept it.”

  He went to an old cabinet next to his desk. The drawer gave a raspy squeak when he pulled it out.

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Spencer, I’ve had a few doubts about this myself. Just couldn’t figure out why. Maybe you might have some ideas.” He sat the file down in front of Spencer.

  As Spencer moved the file to his lap and opened it, a sheaf of photographs fell out—some pictures of the Clays; nude bodies, both in the hotel bedroom and on a medical examining table. Spencer had seen a fair number of corpses in his time on the police beat as a young reporter. The expression on Vicky Clay’s face made hers seem more grisly than those of a lot of mutilation victims.

  One photo was a close-up of the scratches on Meade Clay’s back.

  “I thought you were going to read the transcript.”

  “I am, Mr. Bensinger. These somehow caught my eye.”

  “They’re pretty horrible. I think about them sometimes, late at night. This is my first murder case.”

  “Where did you go to law school?”

  “UVA.”

  Spencer had had prep school friends who had gone to that estimable institution. “Why aren’t you in Washington making some money with a big firm? You could get a job like this with a mail order degree.”

  “I plan to go into private practice out here, maybe over in Winchester or Leesburg,” Bensinger said defensively. “My family’s from here. My wife’s from Warrenton.”

  Spencer set the picture of the scratches in front of the man. “You may have lived a cloistered existence at UVA, Mr. Bensinger, but I’ve been around a little and, let me tell you, any woman who did this to a man would bring his amorous feelings to a halt in a hell of a hurry.”

  “I thought about that.”

  “There’s a pattern to them. Did you notice that? A kind of circular pattern. Almost like writing.”

  “I guess there is.”

  “I’d like to have someone take a look at this, someone with an expert eye.”

  Bensinger bit down on his lip again. He stared closely at the photograph, then looked up, still squinting. He reminded Spencer of Showers, trying to decide what would be the right thing to do.

  “You’re part of the Showers family?” Bensinger said.

  “Our mothers were sisters.”

  “All right. For the captain’s sake. But get it back to me fast.”

  “I’d like to look through this transcript, but I’m running a little behind.”

  “I’m not going to let you take that, Mr. Spencer.”

  “Well, I’ll be back. And don’t worry. No one will know about this—except my cousin.”

  Bensinger rose, handing the photograph back to Spencer.

  “One more thing,” Spencer said. “Do you handle cases of fraudulent livestock transactions?”

  “If there was a big swindle or something, I guess we would. If it was just a dispute over a horse sale, those are usually handled in a civil suit. There aren’t many cases like that, not here in Dandy-town.”

  “But if a crime were involved?”

  “Sure.”

  “I may have some business for you.”

  When he left, he found a parking ticket in the windshield of his car.

  State dinners were very much a formalized ritual, following the same time-tested script of pomp and circumstance no matter who was president and who was the honored guest—the president of Togo accorded the same treatment as the prime minister of Britain or the chancellor of Germany, the same red carpet, marine band, elaborate menu, and glittering array of famous names on the guest list. An invitation to dine at the White House was prized no matter what the occasion.

  The first lady’s social office was ostensibly in charge of these affairs, and social secretary Toby Kevin, a man with an irrepressible flair and fondness for getting his name and picture into the newspapers and social magazines, fluttered everywhere. Early on in the administration, he’d proposed that state dinners be elevated from black tie to white tie events. He’d become the object of some ridicule when it was learned that his suggestion was motivated solely by a desire to wear some of the outlandish foreign decorations he’d acquired over the years. He had one from Brunei that rivaled anything worn by British royals.

  He was hanging around the scene this evening more like a head butler than a royal, but was causing no less worry to the first lady. The United States was particularly sensitive to the feelings of its increasingly important neighbor to the south, and, with the Belize crisis still bubbling, the White House wanted no repetition of the kind of gaffes that had occurred in the past, such as President Jimmy Carter’s telling a “Montezuma’s Revenge” joke at a state banquet in Mexico City in 1979, or an affront that had been narrowly averted in the Bush administration. A not-so-clever chef of the time had decorated the “Mexican surprise” dessert for a state dinner with miniature Mexican huts complete with frosting figures of sleeping Mexican peasants in sombreros slumbering against the hut walls. Mrs. Bush’s social secretary had hastily knocked these offensive niceties off all one hundred dessert plates, but only minutes before the dinner had been about to commence.

  This evening, Kevin was contenting himself merely with ordering functionaries of both countries about on pointless errands. Finally, the president’s wife herself issued him a direct request to get out of the way and join those preparing for the official welcome of the Mexican president on the steps of the North Portico.

  It was extremely hot and muggy out there, wit
h lowering storm clouds threatening a downpour. The Mexican president was overdue, and if he didn’t show up soon, Kevin, the military honor guard, and the others on the steps could find themselves thoroughly soaked. By the time the motorcade approached, the great, ancient trees on the White House lawn were beginning to sway with gusts of forbidding wind.

  Spencer, arriving at the last minute, joined the other newspeople in rather raffish evening dress gathered in a noisy crowd behind a velvet rope in the east entrance hall on the White House ground floor, which guests had to pass through on their way upstairs to the Executive Mansion’s main level. The top-ranking American and Mexican officials entered elsewhere, of course, but most of the invitees had to run this gamut. The drab and frumpy corporate CEOs and their wives attracted little interest, but the movie stars, members of Congress, and military officers who came through the hall were greeted with sudden flares of television and news camera lights and small barrages of trivial questions.

  “Is this your first time at the White House, Miss Shields?”

  “General, are you concerned about the situation in Belize?”

  “Are you happy with the budget compromise, Senator?”

  “Mrs. Moody, is that a Bob Mackie gown?”

  Deena, unaccompanied by her husband, had arrived with Bernie Bloch and his wife. The Blochs stood uncomfortably by while Deena posed for the cameras and chattered with the reporters, holding up other guests in line behind them. None of the newspeople seemed to recognize the billionaire, or care about his presence.

  Spencer recognized him. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to fire a couple of shafts.

  “Mr. Bloch,” he asked, leaning out over the rope, “are you concerned about the effect the Earth Treaty’s going to have on your coal mines and chemical companies?”

  Bloch, startled, eyed Spencer sharply. He looked quite dumpy in his tuxedo, which reminded Spencer of something a Las Vegas nightclub emcee might sport at a mafioso wedding—or funeral. A couple of women reporters pressed up against Spencer, their notebooks at the ready, hopeful that something significant was being said.