Nothing but Gossip (13 page)

Again, I was impressed by her cool. What she had just told us about how the
SIBA
shares would be voted was beyond “problematic,” it could be disastrous. But in spite of the fact that she was, after all, fighting for the survival of her company, she displayed no daylight. No chink in her armor.

“What about Alma’s block?” I said. “Now that she’s not going to be there voting it herself, is there any chance there will be any give in the vote?”

Under normal circumstances, this would be an especially key question, because how the person being questioned reacted would give some sense of involvement or culpability. But with Mercedes I expected no reaction and got none. She could have been talking about a tree, except she might be more interested in a tree than she was in her sister.

“She made a big production about signing her proxy at the last board meeting, drawing her line in the sand. We can’t touch that stock. If we could, there wouldn’t be any problem. Here’s how I see it happening.” Mercedes removed the sheet from my hand and, with the gold pen, checked off names. “My camp—which we call the Company Camp—includes me, seven hundred thousand shares. Entek, fifty. The Fletchers, a hundred. And Wade, another fifty. That’s nine hundred thousand.

“The Challengers, Alma’s group—those in favor of the Russian venture—include Alma, seven hundred.
SIBA
, one seventy-five. McGee, probably, he’s such a low-life, fifty. That’s nine twenty-five.” She tossed the list back. “You can see why Johnny Bourbon is so important.”

“You’re sure Wade will vote with you?”

“Always has,” Mercedes answered.

“Don’t you find that even slightly curious?” I asked, because I surely did. “To vote against your spouse, so publicly?”

She looked up from the sheet. “Lilly, I don’t think you know either one of them at all. I mean, when was the last time you saw Alma? Twenty-five, thirty years ago? And I don’t think you’d even met Wade until Monday. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“He and Alma have the most toxic, recriminatory, retaliatory relationship I’ve ever seen. They fight like cats and dogs. Publicly. It’s ridiculous. It’s as though they’re addicted to the pain.”

“Physical pain?” I asked. “Or mental?”

“All pain. Alma …” she began, but then closed her eyes and wrinkled her nose as though she’d just taken a bite of spoiled meat. I could tell she wanted to say more but discretion, or family loyalty, or some private knowledge stopped her. “It’s just sick,” she finally said and swallowed.

“Alma what?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing but gossip.”

“Wade was at the hospital this morning,” I said. “He looked like he’d been there all night.”

“I doubt it. He’d probably been up all night, but not with her. Listen. Wade’s not a bad guy, he’s just married to the wrong person. He’s the kind of man who
shouldn’t be married at all because he can’t seem to keep his pants zipped, but he wouldn’t kill his wife. He’s worked too hard to get where he’s gotten.”

“Who do you think shot her?”

“I don’t know.” Mercedes shook her head. “But I know it wasn’t Wade. Why would he? Why wait till now? He doesn’t need the money and, as I said, I think they both love the brutality. Frankly, I think she was shot either by one of the ex-lovers she screwed or some tree-hugger she’d offended or some militia member she ticked off, or maybe she shot herself and was too drunk to realize she’d missed the first time. You know”—Mercedes looked me straight in the eye—“some people never amount to anything. They just fiddle away their lives oblivious to everyone around them. Alma is one of those people who won’t be missed if she dies because she’s never exactly been around to begin with.”

Well, Mercedes was right about that. From what I’d seen of Alma, she existed only as a black hole, sucking life into her maw.

“Who’s Edith Rutherford?” I asked, looking at another name on the list.

“Oh, heaven help us,” Mercedes groaned and rolled her eyes, which for the first time showed a little sparkle. “My aunt. She was married to my father’s brother. He left Roundup right after the war and moved to New York and went into the meat-locker business or something equally distinguished. He died several years ago. And I haven’t got the slightest idea how she’ll vote—she stopped communicating with Alma and me when I refused to put her on the board after Father died. Aunt Edith is a complete living, breathing, walking, talking nightmare. I’d rather have Mike Wallace and ‘Sixty Minutes’ show up than Aunt Edith because she simply
will not shut up. She is the most obnoxious, antagonistic, argumentative person I’ve ever known in my life.”

“Does she still live in New York?”

“No. She moved to San Diego a few years ago.” Mercedes shrugged. “Maybe her plane will crash. I should be so lucky. She doesn’t have enough shares to make any difference, but the way she acts, you’d think she was the chairman emeritus. Who’s next?”

“Let’s talk about Johnny again.” I said it with a straight face, but the picture of this elegant Armaniesque swan mindlessly, passionately entwined with a jamboree-suited, country-western satyr like Johnny Bourbon in a mirrored guest bathroom was so
surreal
, I wanted to say, “Are you insane? I just can’t even believe you did such a thing.”

“All I know, is that I think I got to him last. I might take one more run at him this afternoon, though.” She laughed. “I think I have the energy, and it’s not as tough duty as you might imagine.”

Just then the door flew open and Duke Fletcher’s lanky presence filled the room like Goliath Gone Western. He spun in with all the
con brio
grace of a duded-up trail boss—his trademark flat-brimmed cowboy hat hunkered firmly on his head like a barrel cactus on a plate. He waved a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Look what came in this morning’s mail, ladies, Elias,” he thundered with obvious relish. “The plot thickens! This looks like a note to me. Doesn’t it look like one to you?” He waved it in my face. “Is everyone still present and accounted for, Mercedes honey?” He tousled her hair in a familiar way that I would have thought would have caused him to lose his hand to a meat cleaver. “No overnight fatalities?”

“Not as far as I know.” She smiled up at him. Mercedes Rutherford was in love with Duke Fletcher.

“Then the little red-ass commies are getting nervous. Good. They can’t intimidate us, by God.” Duke sailed the hat across the room, where it circled and landed on the brass hook of a coatrack.

It was the same message Mercedes had received.

“What do the conniving little fellow-traveler peckerheads want now?” he demanded.

“Vote yes or you’ll diet,” Mercedes said calmly.

That stopped him. “Whoa there. Say again?”

“We think whoever sent it meant, ‘Vote yes or you’ll die,’ but copied down the wrong word.” Her voice was acerbic, and she pursed her lips as if she’d just bitten into a lemon.

“May I see that, please?” I took the sheet in my tweezers and smoothed it out on the table next to Mercedes’s copy. They appeared identical. I wondered if all the major stockholders and everyone on the board had received the same communiqué. Even though the message was mangled, the meaning was clear: Vote yes or you’ll die. What did all this mean? A mass murder at the annual meeting? A terrorist bombing? A methodical elimination of each stockholder between now and ten o’clock tomorrow morning?

Adrenaline surged into my veins, tightening my stomach and sharpening my wits. I felt I was on the brink of a case that could launch me into some serious international business beyond the marchese’s missing Tiepolo, which I loved, but it wasn’t twenty billion barrels of oil in a frozen land where espionage was still a way of life and vodka and sable were legitimate commodities.

I reached for my cellphone to call Jack Lewis and tell him to get on the ball and notify forensics, when Elias passed a note across to me. “Eleven thirty-five,” it said. He caught my eye and tapped his watch.

Oh, God. Not now. Not now, I wanted to scream. My heart started to pound. I thought it would jump out of my chest. I looked at Elias, and his eyes said, Okay, Lilly. This is it. Time’s up. What will it be? And I knew I was staring at the most important decision I’d make in my life. Until now, my life had been my career, period. Did I want more or not? Could I fit the two together and make it work? Or did I have to choose between Richard Jerome and the Russians? I was just hours from promising to forsake all others, a promise I would keep if I made it. It didn’t mean my career would end, only that it would no longer be my top priority. My decision right now would be a pretty good gauge of what the future held.

Elias stared hard at me and I stared back. My breath grew short. My hands began to shake and the sea roared in my ears. I opened my purse. There was my phone. All it would take was one call to Richard: Something big has come up. I can’t go to the airport with you to pick up your parents and sons. I’ll meet you later. That would be the end and we would both know it. I reached in and my shaking fingers touched the cold plastic.

I
don’t think anyone noticed that I fumbled slightly as I yanked two large clear plastic freezer-size Ziploc bags out of my purse. I slid Mercedes’s Russian letter into one, the senator’s into the other, and sealed them.

“I’ve got another appointment,” I said and tucked everything back into my bag. “We’ll drop these off at the police forensics lab.”

“I don’t understand,” Duke said, insulted. A large frown creased his face, sunburned so many times it remained in a permanent state of scorch. “I just got here. Don’t you have any questions for me?”

I nodded. “A few, yes. But just one big one for now: Where were you when Alma Gilhooly was shot?”

Evidently this was not the question he’d been expecting, because he drew back and demanded I apologize, in a cowboy sort of way: “Hey, hold on there, Lilly gal. I think you’d best take that back.”

“Duke, do me a favor. Just answer the question. I’m late for another appointment and I know we could sit around and jaw-jack this thing to death for another
hour or two, but at the moment, I’m out of time and I’m just going to have to cut right to the bottom line. I apologize, but tell me now or I promise you that neither I nor any member of my family will give you any money to run for President.”

We like straight talk out West, and in less than a heartbeat, he gave me his aw-shucks grin.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to hide, but the truth is, I can’t exactly remember who I was talking to, or rather listening to. All these cocktail parties run together. All I do is listen and hope the fellow will give me some money and vote for me. I just know it was someone or other, and then I saw you take off like a rabbit down the hall with your sidearm waving. I’ll work on remembering, though. Maybe Mercedes will recall, she’s a crackerjack in that department.” He grinned over at her, evidently unaware that she had been busy securing Johnny Bourbon’s proxy at that time.

“Where can I reach you?” Mercedes asked.

“My office knows where I am every second,” I told her. “Right now, though, Richard and I are going to the airport to pick up his family.”

A tinge of what could have been envy flared in Mercedes’s eyes. “I tried to get Richard Jerome to fall in love with me when he first got to town, but I kept having to break our dates because of business. I regret it.”

I knew I didn’t need any reassurance that I’d made the right decision, but her expression was thoughtful and gave me a nice smug glow, deep down.

“Do you want me to assign a security detail to you and Duke?” I asked. “In case the letter-writer decides to try something before the meeting?”

“No, thanks,” Mercedes answered for both of them, although I could tell Duke was just itching to have a
security contingent follow him around. “I’ll have our own security beefed up. We’ll be well protected.”

“What about security at the meeting? Can we help out there?”

“No. It’s already heavy. Always. These meetings are harder to get into than the White House.”

“All right,” I said. “Just call if you want us to augment it. Also, if any more stockholders or directors call to report they’ve received one of these letters, notify my office immediately and we’ll send someone to pick up the documents.”

We shook hands at the door to her office.

“You’re lucky,” she said to me.

“I know. I’ll be in touch.”

“This is an incredible situation,” I said to Richard as I settled myself comfortably in the tan leather seat of his big old Mercedes convertible. Elias followed in his Suburban as we cruised out to the airport. Shortly it emerged like the Emerald City in the middle of nowhere on several thousand acres my father had sold to the City of Roundup after negotiating to retain the oil, gas, and mineral rights.

I told Richard about the magnitude of the Russian venture, the botched-up letters, the list of stockholders, Mercedes Rutherford and Johnny Bourbon in the powder room, the choice I’d made when Elias had pointed out the time.

“That was an incredible moment for me,” I said. “It was like ‘Okay, this is it.’ And do you know why I know I’m doing the right thing?” I didn’t wait for him to respond. “Because in the past I would have said, ‘Well, that’s the way it goes, I’ll just get another guy.’ But today, even though it made my heart pound a little
and gave me the shakes, it was excellent. Making the decision was easy. I can’t wait to be married to you.”

Richard pulled my hand to his lips and kissed it and then turned it over and kissed the palm. “You know,” he said evenly, “I like what you do—it’s part of who you are.”

“Good, because this case is a doozy. We might have to go to Siberia.”

“Say when.”

I reached under my jacket and undipped my pager—it had been vibrating almost continuously since I’d gotten to Mercedes’s office. “Look at this,” I said. “Eight calls from my mother and two from the office.”

Linda told me, as I suspected she would, that so far, Wade, Johnny Bourbon, and Aunt Edith Rutherford had called to report receiving the Russian notes. I told her to call them back and instruct them to set the letters aside until someone from Jack Lewis’s office came to pick them up. We’d not heard from Kennedy McGee, who, Linda informed me, had resumed residence in Mrs. Bromley’s guest room. Mrs. Bromley being an avid big-game hunter and an even more avid fan of Mr. McGee. I did not consider him to be a serious suspect. He’d been in jail in Bennett’s Fort the afternoon before when the letters were mailed, and he wouldn’t botch up Alma’s shooting the way the assailant did. Maybe I didn’t suspect him because I didn’t want to. I didn’t like him and didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I wished he’d disappear.