Nothing but Gossip (7 page)

“Who else?”

“Ever heard of Duke Fletcher?”

“You mean the senator from Montana?”

Wade nodded. “Former senator. They were our next-door neighbors in Billings, when they were in town anyhow. His wife died last year. Alma promised to help get him reelected, but then he did something to piss her off, some kind of environmental deal—Alma was opposed to all environmental legislation—and she yanked her pledge.”

“I saw him and Alma talking at the party. She seemed friendly enough.”

“Alma never closed the door. She always kept hope alive. Kept her money out there like a carrot.”

“And a stick, sounds like to me,” I said, recalling her saying she’d told Johnny Bourbon she would withdraw her support from his ministry if he didn’t leave his wife. I also noticed that Wade kept referring to her in the past tense, as though her imminent death were a foregone conclusion.

“That’s about as good a description as you could get,” Wade agreed. “And then, of course, you have to keep in mind that Duke’s a politician and he’s running for President and money’s always welcome. And then there’s the proxy fight with her sister. This thing’s really getting ugly.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Mercedes is chairman and CEO of the company, and Alma is chairman of the Executive Committee of the board. Alma and the COO, some hotshot geologist, want to develop a field in Siberia, and Mercedes is opposed. The board’s split right down the middle, and some people say it won’t be decided until the votes are counted at the annual shareholders’ meeting. The venture would require an initial investment of about six billion—about seventy-five percent of which they’d have to borrow—and that’s just to get some of the groundwork done, just to get to preliminary exploration, doesn’t include up and running, with no guarantees from the Russian government. To borrow that much money could be a make-or-break deal for Rutherford Oil. I personally think it’s too big a crap shoot for a company that size.”

“Where are the lines drawn?”

Wade drummed his fingers on the desktop and squinted out the window. “I’m not really sure. Alma and Mercedes each own thirty-five percent of the company, and they’ve each been courting the other major stockholders so actively I don’t think anyone knows what’ll happen until the actual vote on Wednesday.”

“This Wednesday?”

“That’s when the annual meeting is. Day after tomorrow.”

“Who inherits the bulk of her estate?”

“Well,” Wade sputtered after a moment. His face splotched up again. “I do.”

I wrote his name on my list after Mercedes.

“But, I mean …” He became as flustered as a teenager caught in the bathroom with a dirty magazine, and I imagine Wade Gilhooly has had that experience more times than most. “I don’t even need it. I’ve made myself
a millionaire ten times over. She had her money and I had mine.”

“I understand,” I said. “But I need to ask you where you were when she was shot?”

“Flying back from Billings.” His mouth had gone suddenly dry and cottony. “I was on Frontier Flight Eight-Six-Six. You can check it. I didn’t get in until nine-fifteen. We were late. I was in seat Eight-C.” Wade verged on panic and was leaning so far forward in his chair I thought he would slide off onto the floor. Beads of sweat circled his receding hairline.

“Calm down, Wade,” I said, laughing. “I believe you.”

“Then you’ll help?”

“I’ll help.”

G
et Frontier Airlines on the phone,” I said to Linda as soon as the sound of Wade’s slow footsteps had disappeared down the rickety wooden staircase that clung to the back of the building like a wet cat hanging from a broken branch. Buck said it wasn’t authentic if it didn’t sag and sway and not to worry because he had plenty of insurance. Of course it wouldn’t be him doing the falling fifteen feet.

“Yes, Marshal Bennett,” the reservations supervisor told me moments later, “Mr. Gilhooly was on Flight Eight-Six-Six last night. He commutes with us regularly.”

“Was the flight delayed?” I was standing at Linda’s desk using her phone, and out the back window I watched Wade pull out of the parking lot in a white Cadillac Eldorado convertible—top down—with red-leather seats and a pair of longhorns on the hood. A blonde in dark glasses sat right next to him, her hand in his pants.

“Let me see.” The agent punched in a few numbers.
“Yes, it was delayed by twenty minutes. There were cattle on the runway in Billings.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Thank you for calling Frontier Airlines.”

The girl’s head disappeared into Wade’s lap as they turned the corner.

I turned to Linda and started laughing. “Good God. Can you believe this bunch?” Wade’s car was swerving carelessly down the hardtop at a high rate of speed. “This guy’s wife is lying in intensive care with half her head missing and he’s getting a blow job on his way to the hospital.”

“Are you going to take the case?”

“Double fee,” I said, and Linda grinned. “Get a retainer agreement and invoice over to him today. Make it clear his deposit has to be in my account this afternoon or the deal’s off.”

“You got it, chief.” Linda turned to her computer and had the invoice printed before I was even back through the door into my office. She followed right on my heels. “Mrs. Van Buren is expecting you at ten-thirty. And your mother called and said please not to forget the Kellys’ party tonight. It’s at six-thirty. The rest of this,” she said, fanning a handful of correspondence like play money, “can wait.”

Mother seemed much calmer about this wedding than she had about my goddaughter Lulu’s in June. She had immersed herself so deeply in the planning and execution of Lulu’s marriage to the Baron, and dedicated herself so totally to the torture of everyone around her, that she never took the time to enjoy herself. I guess she felt she’d planned my nuptials for so many years, she could carry them off in her sleep. Unfortunately, deep down, of course, we all knew that this sanguine attitude masked a sleeping volcano, that the clock was ticking,
and that, like a letter bomb, she was scheduled to go off any second. What she was doing was vamping for time, building up back-pressure.

I took the triple-magnification mirror out of my desk drawer, checked my makeup, and was just spinning the dial on the big, antique black-lacquered safe I’d claimed from one of my father’s banks when Elias arrived with coffee and doughnut holes for Linda.

“Don’t forget,” he said. The tumblers fell into place and I slammed the handle down with the sound and authority of a good old-fashioned lockup, then removed a small black-velvet bag, its braided satin drawstring pulled tight. “The Kellys’ party is at six-thirty.”

“I know, Mother already called.” I spilled Mrs. Van Buren’s twelve, perfectly matched, quarter-sized, Ceylon sapphires onto my desk and counted to make sure they were all there.

“She says starting today I have to go everywhere you go. Sort of an official escort. How are you this morning, my darling?” He gave Linda a hug and a kiss that was actually more like a little peck from a shy bear.

“Elias,” I said, drizzling the stones back into their soft pouch. They made deliciously solid clicks, like a slow game of marbles heard from a distance. “Just because I missed most of Lulu’s parties doesn’t mean I’m going to miss any of Richard’s and mine. And you won’t be an escort, you’ll be a baby-sitter. I swear to God I’ll be there.”

Elias shook his head. “Sorry. You have virtually no credibility in this department. Besides, we’ll have fun. I’ll be your driver.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“You mean right now? I just got here. What about the coffee and doughnuts and everything?”

“I’ll tell you what. For today, I’ll just call in every hour. How’s that?”

“Yeah.” Elias popped two tender, glazed, deep-fried morsels into his mouth. “I suppose that’ll be okay for today. We’ll start tomorrow.”

I headed for town, winding through Little Squaw Canyon at a higher rate of speed than Wade, because I passed him about five minutes later. The convertible was pulled over on the side of the road. His head was pushed into the red-leather headrest. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed. I supposed that if my windows had been down I could have heard him yelling. Only the back of the blonde’s head was visible, submerged as she was in the depths of Wade’s Cerrutti gabardines.

“That guy is worse than a dog,” I said aloud.

My lookout, Baby, stood with her front paws on the Jeep’s dashboard and didn’t give him more than a blink. She was searching for bigger game than Wade Gilhooly.

Mrs. Van Buren was ecstatic to recover her sapphires, which had been lifted from her neck in a suite at the Grand Hotel during an evening rendezvous, a little piece of action torn off furtively at the Arthritis Foundation annual benefit. To complicate the matter further, it was the foundation honoree, the Man of the Year, she had met in the suite, and since time was limited, he’d had to return to the ballroom before the house detective arrived, which kept his skirts nicely clean. In the meantime, Mrs. Van Buren sent a message to her husband that she had suffered a sick spell and was waiting for him at the front door, where he found her, the million-dollar
sapphire necklace ostensibly safely snuggled beneath her velvet scarf and fur coat.

I had known Nell Van Buren all my life; she was only a few years older than I and was notorious for messing around on her husband. There are many things I’m old-fashioned about and fidelity is one of them. God knows, I’ve had more than my share of married lovers, but did I trust them? Are you kidding? Not a chance. They were cheaters. I suppose that’s why I’ve always taken marriage so seriously: I figure a promise is a promise and playing around on your partner is simply not a go. Otherwise, who can you trust? That’s the way it works on the police force anyhow, and that’s good enough for me.

Her large check was safe in my pocket, my skill, silence, and discretion paid for in full, as I turned out of her tree-lined driveway across the street from the Roundup Country Club. I decided to call Richard and see what he was up to. See if he still loved me.

“He’s over in the theater,” his secretary told me. “They’ve got a Così rehearsal until noon. Do you want me to transfer you?”

I loved going to opera rehearsals. So much happened, so much motion and talking and music. Lighting people stood right in front of the tenor while he sang and made sure the spots hit him just right while the wardrobe mistress tugged on the back of his uniform jacket to make sure it didn’t bunch up during that particular aria where he’d have to wave his arms around, and in the background the director moved the rest of the cast here and there and then descended into the front of the house to examine his work like a painter, and then motioned to the movement trainer that the ladies should be doing little dips and twirls with their fans, “Like this,” not big swooping ones, “Like this,”
and all the cast members who weren’t singing would laugh at his exaggerated antics, and then he called out to the stage manager, who was having a conversation in a normal voice with his assistant about the lighting cues, that Yes, that was just right, and all the while the orchestra was booming along at full pitch. The incredible thing to me was that everyone always seemed to be on the same page, because at some point during all this turmoil, the conductor would give his baton a little ding on his music stand and all would come to a complete and silent halt and he would say quietly, “Okay, fine. Let’s try that again from the …” and I never could figure out what he said at that point but everyone else could and always went right to the perfect spot. Sometimes it even seemed they started right in the middle of a note. And they kept on like this for hours every day, for weeks, when finally the music, the voices, the costumes, the lights, and the action all melded together into an opulent spectacle. To me it is miraculous.

“No, that’s okay. Just tell him I’ll drop in later and see if he can grab a quick lunch.”

I decided to pay a visit to the crime scene.

A
squad car blocked the brick gateway that marked the entrance to the Gilhooly residence across the road from the tenth green. Two patrolmen—one younger, one older—leaned against the black-and-white in the warm late-morning sunshine sipping coffee and talking, no doubt about the Colorado Rockies and their bid for the pennant. One more win and everyone was sure they’d go all the way to the Series. I flashed my badge.

“Good morning, Marshal,” the older patrolman said. “Did Chief Lewis clear you in?”

“Sure did,” I lied.

“Fair enough.” He signaled for his partner to back their car far enough for me to pass.

“Thanks,” I said and headed down the gravel drive. Wade’s Eldorado was visible in one of the bays of the four-car garage, while a white forensics van and another squad car were parked at the front door. Directly behind them sat a bright red Jaguar XJR-S convertible, its passenger seat stacked with expensive canvas luggage.
A uniformed patrolman was eyeing the car enviously.

“Good morning,” I said. “Nice wheels.”

“Morning, Marshal.” He smiled. “Too rich for my blood.”

The Gilhoolys’ gray-pine front door was open and just inside, a gigantic, wildly ornate, white-wrought-iron Victorian birdcage sat in the entry hall like a snowbound jail cell, a stuffed bald eagle perched on the bird swing. The more I saw of this place, the worse it got. The house was quiet. Wade was nowhere in sight.

“Ridiculous thing, isn’t it?” A cultured English accent startled me from behind, and I turned to see a tall, tan, handsome man, whose ruggedness reminded me of Richard’s, but whose sea-green eyes had a Me Tarzan–You Jane attitude that made me feel like a heifer at a cattle sale. An old scar curved down his cheek, from the corner of his eye to just below the corner of his mouth, which was chiseled and square, and he was rakishly dressed in khaki safari gear, meticulously tailored to show off his flat stomach and tapered waist. Knee-high, tight leather boots strained over his muscled calves. I felt as if I were looking at Indiana Jones. He was too glamorous to be true.