The Last Virginia Gentleman

by Michael Kilian

  As the days passed, and Becky seemed if anything to grow worse, Alixe thought of telephoning Showers down at Fort Hill, but rejected the idea. He wouldn’t abandon his duty post unless there was a genuine emergency—the U.S. Army regulation kind. Even if she could persuade him that was the case, his return might not accomplish any good at all. What Becky probably needed was a big kick in the behind, and Showers was not that kind of hard man.

  Alixe did telephone Becky’s psychiatrist father, but he was no help whatsoever. In his wimpy, unhappy way, he proved as unyielding on a point of principle as Showers. Rebecca had run off at a legal age and of her own volition. He would assist her in any way he could, but only if she asked him. She would always be welcome, but he and his wife were not going to reach out for her, not anymore. He suggested that Alixe give her a sedative.

  Becky probably had sedatives of assorted kinds enough.

  In the end, it was hunger that drove Becky out. Alixe had noted the diminishing food supplies in Showers’ larder. When milk, bread, spaghetti, and peanut butter were gone, Becky was up the next morning and into her Toyota, heading for town.

  Alixe figured she had at least an hour to search the cottage. Banging and rummaging through cabinets and drawers, she found nothing. Then, sitting on Becky’s disheveled bed, she gave some hard thought to her problem. If the girl was hiding anything, it was from Showers or Billy. There were some things a man would instinctively avoid.

  Going back into the bathroom, Alixe reopened the cabinet beneath the washbasin, pulling out a large and nearly full box of sanitary napkins. It was quite dusty, and, as she suspected, not nearly full at all. Removing the wrapped packets on top, she found something altogether different from what she was looking for.

  There was no cocaine, no pills, no pint bottles. There was a diary, which Alixe could not bring herself to look through, and a small stack of Polaroid photographs, which she could not resist examining. They were all of Becky, and she was naked in all of them—in two, posed rather obscenely. Alixe supposed they had been Billy’s idea. His fondness for any kind of pornography was not a well-kept secret.

  At the bottom of the box was a videotape cassette, bearing a piece of tape with the word VICKY on it. Alixe stood holding it a long moment, uncertain what to do. Like many people with the traditional views of her class, she considered television a vulgar, middle-class amusement, and had no TV set in her own house. Neither did Showers. Her stablehands had a set in their quarters, but no VCR.

  Becky had one in her living room.

  Though it couldn’t be long before Becky returned, Alixe went to it. The controls were simple enough to figure out, and shortly the screen glowed with the image of Vicky Clay’s naked back and behind, positioned above the face of another woman, reclining nude on a bed.

  Alixe stared raptly, fascinated to see years of what had been mere gossip come to life in the flesh. As the VCR whirred on, Vicky reached some point of satisfaction and stiffened, arching her back. Relaxing slowly, she rolled over to the side, allowing the other woman to sit up. Alixe was stunned to see who it was.

  It was not Becky, who entered the picture from the side, naked. She climbed upon the bed and sat there, the three women seemingly unaware of the camera, which might well have been positioned in some hiding place by the wretched Billy, who was fully capable of such a mean and devious trick.

  Alixe moved closer to the screen, watching as Becky lay down, urging the third woman to make love to her. Somewhat reluctantly, she began to do so, but was interrupted by Vicky, who began to harangue Becky. Alixe heard her mention Showers’ name, and saw Becky sit up again, angry. Alixe turned up the volume, but after a moment, hastily clicked off the set and ejected the cassette.

  If she didn’t hurry, she was going to be caught here by Becky, and then all hell truly would break loose. She had heard and seen enough. It was imperative that Showers see the tape, but she didn’t dare just walk off with it, for Becky would surely notice its absence. After an agonizing minute or so of indecision, it occurred to her that Becky had probably viewed the tape several times and might not be much interested in doing so again—at least not soon.

  There were a number of cassettes in disorderly stacks on the shelf beneath the VCR—from the look of them, mostly copies of rental movies. Alixe picked one at random, removed it from its box, and peeled off the hand-printed label, exchanging it for the one marked VICKY. Sticking the cassette with the bedroom scene in the belt of her breeches underneath her jacket, she put the disguised tape in the bottom of the sanitary napkin box, piling its other contents on top of it and returning the box to the place where she had found it.

  Then she got out fast, gunning her pickup out of Showers’ yard and onto the road. She had just turned into her own drive when Becky’s Toyota came whizzing by.

  Alixe braked. She had a lock box in her study and there were dozens of other places in her house where she might hide the tape, but after a barn fire and Billy’s break-in to Becky’s cottage, none of them seemed altogether safe. She looked at her watch. She had almost an hour before the bank in Dandytown closed. She kept several safe deposit boxes there. It would be the best place for the tape. She wanted no one else to see it but Showers, at least for the time being. If Becky did discover it missing, Alixe didn’t want it anywhere the girl could lay hands on it.

  Backing out of her drive, she headed for town, wondering how much food Becky had brought home with her.

  Showers drove his National Guard Jeep at the head of the little convoy, the company first sergeant beside him. They had finished their maneuvers, their battalion losing the training exercise to an infantry outfit from Fort Bragg, but doing so honorably. His support unit had been in the rear, but had acquitted itself well, beating off raiders twice and surviving an ambush. As they’d been up against regular army troops, Showers felt rather proud.

  They were returning from the sprawling, pine-forested bivouac area to a dispersal point in the fort’s headquarters compound. After their borrowed equipment was returned and their blank ammunition and fuel accounted for, his company would be free to leave for home. He was looking forward to that. The soldiering had invigorated him, and he needed to get busy with all the things he had decided to do. The military maneuvers had been conducive to productive thought and had put him in a very decisive frame of mind.

  He’d called his cousin Jack, who had informed him he was making progress and said he expected to make a lot more in the next few days. That he had discovered the probable owner of the bay was welcome news. That Vicky Clay had apparently scratched the first three letters of Bernie Bloch’s name into her husband’s back came as no shock to Showers, not after he’d looked at that dead groom’s face.

  He’d tried to reach Alixe, but she’d been out both times he’d called.

  Pulling into the headquarters compound, he parked the Jeep and stood watching as his following three-quarter and two-and-a-half-ton trucks formed up side by side for unloading. A young second lieutenant rushed up from one of the vehicles, but Showers gave his instructions to the first sergeant, a large, mellow-voiced black man named McKinley Williams, who, like Showers, had served in the regular army. He’d won the bronze star in Vietnam.

  Dismissing him with a friendly salute, Showers turned to check in with his colonel, then halted in stunned surprise. In the front row of a nearby parking area reserved for civilian vehicles was the dented yellow Volkswagen convertible with California plates. Leaning against its door was May Moody, wearing jeans and a blue blouse.

  She smiled in friendly fashion at his approach, as though the dreadful scene at his farm had never occurred. “So, you really are a captain.”

  “You never call,” he said. “You just appear.”

  “Oh, I called,” she said. “I got an earful of abuse from that girl on your farm. She told me your whereabouts were none of my bloody business and that I was the last person in the world you’d want to see.”

  “That’s not true. I’m sorry she was ru
de to you.”

  “I’ve had worse from directors—not to speak of fellow actors. I called your office. Your former office, I was sorry to hear. They told me you were down here. It took forever to get through to the right military person, but I finally managed to learn that you’d be returning from the field this morning, so here I am. What’s ‘the field’?”

  “Some farmland southeast of here. We defended it, and lost.”

  “Well, welcome home, soldier.”

  Their eyes took each other in for a moment. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “Very glad. I was going to call on you tomorrow.”

  She became more serious. “I want to help you, Mr. Showers.”

  “David.”

  “David. I’ve decided to be a party to your lawsuit. I want to help you any way I can. I’m not going to let Bernie Bloch and my father get away with what they’ve done to you.”

  He had left the Cherokee at his National Guard company’s small compound near Dandytown, and had planned to ride back in one of the military vehicles, but she offered to drive him out in her Volkswagen, and, when he demurred, she insisted on it.

  They stopped first at her apartment on Capitol Hill. She wanted to see the horse, and thought she’d stay the night at the Dandytown Inn.

  He sat in his fatigues on the couch in her tiny living room while she went to pack a small bag. She left the door to her bedroom partially opened while she gathered her belongings, pausing afterward to brush her hair. Showers could see her moving shadow cast by reflected sunlight on the opposite wall, the dancing strokes of her arm and brush magnified in silhouette. It gave him an embarrassing feeling of intimacy, as though he were sitting next to her, sharing a private moment.

  May went into her bathroom. Showers turned his attention to the books on her coffee table—Katharine Hepburn’s autobiography, a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, a compendium of famous Hollywood murders, and, surprisingly, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Night Flight—in French: Vol de nuit. Except for a few Dick Francis novels he noticed on a nearby bookshelf, there was no book that had to do with horses.

  The bathroom door clicked open, and she stepped into the room, the scent of perfume accompanying her.

  “Just about ready,” she said. “You’ve been very patient.”

  “Not at all.”

  She returned to the bedroom. In silhouette on the wall, he watched her finish up her packing. They’d be together much of the day into the evening and likely the next day, but he wished he weren’t taking her to Dandytown.

  He glanced down at his olive-drab military duffel, set by the door. Before leaving Fort A. P. Hill, he’d signed himself out a box of pistol ammunition. He’d stopped to replace the blanks in his clip.

  She rejoined him, carrying her bag.

  “Okay.” She gave him something more genuine than a movie star smile. “This time I may be able to enjoy myself.”

  They stopped for a late lunch at the Red Fox Inn in Middleburg. Conversation had been difficult in her noisy little open car while on the interstate, and when they had talked, it had been casually. As they ate their meal—salad and iced tea for both of them—they got down to serious business.

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  He collected himself. “I suspect—I believe very strongly—that the horse you bought was stolen from a man in Canada. His name’s Ted Ryan. He’s a very important racing figure up there and I think the bay is quite valuable. They gave the horse the papers of a very similar animal, one descended from a mare my father owned, and tried to pass him off as one and the same. The stolen bay had no registration number on its lip, so they were able to give him the other horse’s tattoo. All very convincing.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “I presume they’re business associates of Mr. Bloch. In New Jersey. I’m informed he does a lot of business up there.”

  “But if the horse is so valuable, why did they put it up for auction?”

  “It was a way of laundering the whole business. Bloch would pick him up at the sale, for such a small amount no one would pay any attention. The title would be legitimate. He’d be free to race him, syndicate him for stud, whatever. Bloch and his friends could have made an enormous amount of money.”

  “But that swine is already filthy rich. Why would he go through all that just to make a little more?”

  “People like that always want more. Till the day they die. And he likes winning horse races. A sleeper like the bay would take a lot of people by surprise. I don’t think Bloch really knows much about horseflesh, but his friends in New Jersey do.”

  “And I messed it all up for them.”

  “Not just you,” he said. “The sheriff kept everyone at the inn, because of the murder. Bloch couldn’t get to the auction. He asked your father to go in his place, but there was a crisis in Washington and he went to his duty post instead. I admire him for that, at least.”

  “You probably think my father’s an evil, despicable man,” she said, finishing her salad. “After he left my mother, that’s what I thought, too. He can be a real bastard—ruthless, arrogant, as inconsiderate as they come. He lies a lot, too, and I hate lies. In L.A., everybody lies. That’s one of the reasons I had to get away from there. But he’s not evil. I’ve thought about that lately. He’s just weak—weak in all the wrong places. Weak about women, weak about his friends, weak about his ego. He has a powerful lot of resentments—about all he had to overcome, about people like you.”

  “There’s nothing special about people like me.”

  “If that were true, Captain Showers, you wouldn’t be here at this moment, and neither would I.” She sipped her iced tea. “I know this sounds like Richard Nixon or something, but my father is not a crook. I hate him for what he did to my mother, but to the best of my knowledge, he’s never cheated anyone, not even when he was making all that money. I truly don’t believe he knows that horse might have been stolen. I don’t think he cares who gets the horse. It’s just—please don’t misunderstand—but, in a way, he reminds me of you. He feels deeply obligated to Bernie Bloch, about a lot of things. He stands by his friends. He’s loyal to people who have been good to him—and there haven’t been many. The newspapers like to call him an opportunist, but I think he really believes in that pompous old fool of a president.” She paused. “He’s ruined your career, hasn’t he?”

  “No, I did that all by myself. He tried to bribe me with a promotion, if I’d sell the horse back to Bloch. But he didn’t fire me when I refused. I resigned because I had to. I broke department regulations.”

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I trusted someone I shouldn’t have. He’s trying to make it up to me, and doing a pretty good job of it. Thanks to him, we’ve learned a lot about this.”

  “Who is he?”

  “My cousin. He’s a newspaperman. His career wasn’t helped by this, either.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll do all right. He’s quite a survivor.”

  “My father grew up with different rules than you did, David. Maybe fewer rules than you, but a lot more than most of the men he’s had to deal with in his life. Bernie Bloch doesn’t have any rules. He just does what he wants.” She lighted a cigarette. “You won’t have to worry about my father for a while. He’s out of the country now. My stepmother, thank God, is with him. She scares the hell out of me. She came over to my apartment a few days ago. She threatened me. About the horse.”

  “Threatened you in what way?”

  “She didn’t make that clear. The scariest thing is that I don’t think my father knew anything about it. I think she did it for Bernie.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s worth more than a billion dollars.” She exhaled a long stream of smoke from her cigarette, then tapped its ash. She had long, slender hands, very much like Lenore’s. She wore no nail polish—Lenore never wore it, either. Something about Lenore’s hands nibbled at his memory, but he couldn’t quite catch hold o
f it.

  “We’d better be going,” she said. “Do you have the horse in Dandytown? You promised me I could see him.”

  He stared at the table, saying nothing.

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “I trust you, May. I’m just worried about taking you out there. This could get a little dangerous.”

  “I can take care of myself. You don’t know the things I’ve been through.”

  “May, my cousin thinks that the dead girl, Vicky Clay, tried to scratch a message on her husband’s back. A name. According to my cousin, the first three letters appear to be B-e-r.”

  “As in Bernie. God.”

  “He thinks they were both murdered. And there’s something else. Someone burned down one of Alixe’s barns and ran her horses off. We’re sure they were after the bay. A man was killed, May. One of her grooms.”

  “Have you gone to the police?”

  “The police is Sheriff Cooke. And we don’t have proof of anything. The insurance company ruled the fire an accident. All we have is enough evidence to show that the horse is a fraud. That’s why I want to press a civil suit. Those New Jersey people will have to testify. My cousin’s called the man in Canada. He wants to see some pictures. If he’s satisfied it’s the horse, he’ll come right down. We can clear everything up.”

  “I said I’d help you.”

  “I’d like you to sign some papers. Then I think you should go back home, where you’ll be safe.”

  “I’m all alone there.” She reached and took his hand. “And—please don’t think I’m coming on to you, Captain Showers—but I feel a hell of a lot safer with you.”