Nothing but Gossip (15 page)

“Don’t make her mad. Don’t make her mad.” Dwight’s eyes darted nervously between Tiffany and me.

“Don’t worry, puddin’. I’m just joking. She knows that. Here’s what you do: You take the name of your first pet as your first name and the name of the first street you lived on as your last name. You with me?”

“So far.”

“All right, then. My first pet was a kitty named Tiffany and my first street was West Butte. But I didn’t want to be Tiffany Butte, people would say it like ‘butt.’
So I used West instead. Pretty neat, huh? What’s yours?”

I didn’t want to tell them it would have been Sally State Road Four-Eight-Five, so I said I couldn’t remember. “Did you win the contest?” I asked. I couldn’t believe she was from Wyoming; we just don’t make people like that up here.

“No.” She dragged a long red fingernail down Dwight’s chest toward the business end of his operation, which had shown no sign of diminishing in spite of his boss’s arrival. He cleared his throat. “But I didn’t mind. It’s such an empty world being just a bodybuilder and a beauty queen. So I just keep myself up for personal fitness reasons, now. You still with me, little feller?”

“Sure thing.” Dwight swallowed.

“I decided it was time to grow up and get a profession, so I went to Orky’s Business School and learned to type. I figured, what the heck, it’d come in handy when I wrote my memoirs. And I’ve got some damn interesting memoirs, too.”

With this Tiffany threw back her head and whooped like she was driving cattle. “Wooo-yow, baby, I’ve got memoirs!” And then she tossed her leg around Dwight’s waist, like her leg was a boa constrictor with a fancy boot or something, and yanked him to her. “And I’m puttin’ you in ’em.”

I don’t mean to be sexist, or chauvinistic, or whatever you want to call it, but to me, she looked like the kind of secretary that if she made a typo and you tried to correct her, she’d just beat you up.

“So,” Tiffany continued once she’d rejoined the planet, “I kind of took to it. I type one hundred words a minute and my dictation is up to two twenty-five.”

Okay, so I was wrong.

“How long have you worked for Mr. Gilhooly?” I asked.

“Only about six months, since he moved his corporate headquarters to Roundup. His secretary in Billings didn’t want to leave. She doesn’t know what she’s missing.” She cupped Dwight’s face in her hand. “Does she, hon?”

“Do you mind telling me where were you on Sunday night?”

“No problem. I spend every Sunday after church at the High Plains Christian Home with my mother.”

“Your mother?” This girl was no more than twenty-five, and her mother couldn’t have been much older than I was.

“Well, my grandmother,” she told Dwight, who listened to her as spellbound as if she were reading the latest Michael Crichton thriller out loud. “My real mother took off when I was three. Never came back. And my grandmother raised me. But she’s real old now, and sick, so she has to live in the home. So I go over there every Sunday and play the piano and bingo and have dinner, flip quarters off my biceps—the old guys love it when I do that—things like that. It’s fun. Everybody’s extra nice. I like it.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “I’ve been thinking about being a nurse.”

Dwight smiled like a complete idiot. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“So you didn’t go to Billings with Mr. Gilhooly on Sunday afternoon?”

“Nope.” She shook her head.

“Do you usually travel with him?”

She had to consider that for a second. “Umm, well, I’d say I usually go with him when he takes his own plane. It’s a Learjet. Like sitting on a rocket.” She delivered this information to Dwight’s fly.

“Will you excuse us a minute, Miss West?” I said.

“No problemo. See you in a minute, Deputy Dog.” The tomato smiled wider and the jaguar’s pink tongue appeared, and Dwight stumbled in the dirt as he followed me.

“I think I’m in love, Marshal Lilly,” he said. “I love you more, but I think I’m in love with Tiffany, big time.”

“Listen to me, Deputy,” I told him. “Shift your brain back to normal, whatever that means, and find out whatever you can from her about Gilhooly’s operations and family life, company executives, anything that could provide us with a possible lead to who shot Alma and what all’s going on here. You with me?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. I’ll get on her right now. I mean, I’ll get on
it
right now.”

We’re such a bunch of sex maniacs at Bennett Security International, it’s a miracle we get any business done.

L
inda was squinting at her computer monitor, thick glasses down low on her nose, head tilted back. She handed me a sheaf of papers. It was a list of names and numbers. The
SIBA
Fund investors.

“How did you get this?” I asked, not really sure if I wanted to know.

She shrugged innocently. “Your brother and I fiddled around on his computer a little, and this accidentally came out. You’d think they’d be more careful. This information could fall into the wrong hands.” She smiled and indicated the closed door of my office. “He was here when I got here.”

“Where’s Elias? Did you go with him last night?”

“Question number one: downtown. He said he’d meet you at the Rutherford meeting, which, incidentally starts at ten, convention center auditorium at the Grand. And question number two: yes. He said he’d fill you in at the meeting. I’m not sure what we found out. And, finally, this was slipped under the door this morning. I opened it first in case it was a bomb or something.
I only touched the edges.” She handed me an envelope with my name scrawled on it: Marshal Lilly Bennett. I slipped out the note:

Dear Marshal Bennett, I apologize for any disruption we’re causing in your schedule and hope you can join me for a drink this evening at six o’clock in your cousin’s saloon so I may apologize in person. Cordially, Bob

“Who’s Bob?”

“Redford,” Linda practically screamed. “Rob-bert Red-ford. He invited you out.”

Isn’t that perfect? Here I am, halfway through my life, halfway up the aisle, my wedding’s in three days, and Robert Redford asks me out. I looked at the ceiling.

“You’re really testing me, Lord,” I said out loud. “First the Rutherfords, then the Russians, and now the Redfords. But forget it. I’m sticking with Richard Jerome and that’s that. End of subject.”

“Aren’t you at least going to meet him?” She couldn’t believe I wasn’t.

“No. I’m busy at six o’clock tonight. We’re going to a dinner party at the Johnsons’. Please call and give him my regrets. Now I’m going to go find out what Wade wants.”

Linda was crestfallen.

“Okay, listen. Why don’t you meet him for me and thank him?”

“Really?”

“Really. Now, would you bring me a cup of coffee?”

Wade worked his way to his feet when I walked in. He offered his hand. The old bruise on his cheekbone had faded to nothing, and the crooked, flattened Liam Neeson veer to his nose made his face enormously
charming when he smiled and greeted me. He appeared more rested than he had the day before—he’d obviously clocked some time in a tanning bed, because his skin had a slightly healthier glow. The starched collar of his shirt concealed most of the angry red scar on his neck.

Even though Wade was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and Gucci tie—all expensive and perfectly fitted—and his manners were fine, in my mind, he’d never be able to shake the slickness of his past. The glibness of a second-rate golf pro hustling for hundreds. The slippery shine of a used-car dealer hustling for the hidden profit. The humiliation and disgrace of the unacceptable son-in-law hustling for approval.

“Sorry to show up so early,” he said without preamble. “But I understand your brother was in Billings last night.”

“Really?” I said and sat down, not surprised he’d been contacted.

“Yes, a friend of mine called. Did he find out anything?”

“Is there anything you think he should have found out?”

Wade thrust his hands deep in his trouser pockets and shrugged his shoulders. “I hope not. I’d hate to think any of our friends tried to kill Alma. I don’t think we have any enemies up there.” He took his cane from where it leaned on the edge of the desk, walked over and looked out the window to the movie-land maelstrom below. Buck was standing on the wooden sidewalk across the street, leaning against a post, belly drooping over his Levi’s, hat pulled low, mirrored glasses shining like beacons, a longneck in his hand.

“Hey,” Wade said, “isn’t that Robert Redford?”

I went to look. “Where?”

“Just went into the café.”

He turned and we were inches away from each other. Up close he looked even better. His eyes were sky blue and flecked with gold—the same color gold as his freckles—and they betrayed an unexpected vulnerability and gentleness. His lips were sensuous and as crooked as his nose.

The moment passed without any more acknowledgment than that of two strangers standing at the same window, and I returned to my chair as Linda gave the door a brisk knock and brought in the coffee.

“I don’t mean to be pushy,” Wade said once Linda was gone. “But I have paid you a boatload of money, and I’m curious if you’ve come up with anything? Any clues at all?”

“You aren’t being a bit pushy,” I answered and cupped the mug with both hands, stalling a little, weighing my words, admiring my engagement ring. Boy, it was big. “You’re entitled to ask. And the answer is: I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Elias yet this morning—he’s going to meet me at the Rutherford meeting—so I don’t know what, if anything, he came up with in Billings. Frankly, I doubt if there’s anything to be found up there. I’m more concerned about the meeting itself. I hope Mercedes’s security chief knows what he’s doing, because it’s starting to look like whoever tried to kill Alma has a large stake in the outcome of the vote.”

“I got one of those letters. What’d it say?”

I explained the bungled message and laughed at his shocked expression. “Can you believe it? Whoever sent them copied down the wrong word out of the dictionary.” As I’d been talking, I’d also been scanning the
SIBA
Fund investor list, and my eyes jarred to a halt. “My God, will you look at this.”

There, in alphabetical order, in black and white, was
the name of America’s most ardent environmentalist-politician-presidential candidate.

“What?” Wade asked.

“Duke Fletcher is an investor in
SIBA
.”

“You can’t be serious.” He reached across and snatched the sheet from my fingers. “
SIBA
is in favor of the Russian venture. It represents everything Duke’s against. They’re destroyers.”

I nodded, too stunned to speak. What was it with our leaders that they give us such hope and then half the time turn out to be double-crossing, underhanded, conniving, immoral bastards? Of course, if we’d just raise everybody’s salary back there in Washington, maybe we’d be able to attract a higher caliber of candidate. Who wants to go live in that godforsaken climate and take constant abuse from the press for a hundred grand a year? No one, except poor schmucks looking for ways to cut corners—they’re the only ones who can afford it. Or else they’re too young to know much that’s helpful. But Duke Fletcher. It made me sick to my stomach. He already had plenty of money. As far as I, and a lot of other people, were concerned, he was the planet Earth’s last, greatest hope.

“Holy moly,” I said.

Linda swept in with a fax. “Elias just sent this over.”

The memo, retrieved out of the ether from some long-ago meeting, showed the genesis of the SIBA name: Siberian Associates. The fund had been formed specifically to take advantage of this venture.

“I don’t believe it,” Wade said. “We’ve been neighbors for a long time and it’s not possible for Duke to be that big a fraud.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, man. Look how late it is. I’ve got to go, I want to stop by the hospital and see how Alma’s doing. I’ll see you at the meeting. You can sit with me if you want, but I’m going
to be working the crowd pretty steadily, trying to keep this vote on track. Look out for the Russians, they’re loose cannons. They’ll feel you up so fast you’ll think you’re a camp follower on a troop train.”

I laughed. “I know, I met them on Sunday, but thanks for the warning. Wade, why are you voting against Alma?”

He grasped the top of the chair back in his hands and leaned over it toward me. “Alma only cares about herself. Always has, always will. She’s a bully who doesn’t think anything is bigger than she is, but most things are. Mercedes has consistently led the company on a responsible path. She could have made more money short-term, but she makes long-term decisions, decisions that work for the company, the environment, the employees, the stockholders. That’s why the stock stays so strong. She’s a big thinker. Long-term, everyone benefits.

“But Alma won’t accept responsibility for herself”—Wade seemed almost out of breath—“much less for the actions of her own company. I’ve always voted against her plank. And now there she is, lying up in the hospital, still breathing in spite of the odds, and still making everyone’s life hell.”

I suddenly felt sorry for Wade Gilhooly. I don’t know what sort of lingering illness he had, but he looked and sounded exhausted, and he spoke in such a babbling rush it was almost as though he were on speed.

“I was sorry about your vice president, Jim Dixon. What’s the latest report on his condition?”

“He’s in bad shape. You might not believe this, but if he dies, I’ll be a lot sorrier to lose him than Alma. Jim’s the glue in my whole operation, but sometimes he drinks more than he should. I was hoping to hand off
the business to him in a few years. Now I’m not so sure.” Wade gave an ironic snort. “Life sucks. You bust your butt to get everything you want, and then by the time you figure out that’s not what you wanted, it’s too late.”

“Yup,” I said. “That’s pretty much the way it works. One more question: Why did you fly commercially to Billings instead of taking your own plane?”

“Three reasons: Their schedule worked for me, which saved me a few thousand dollars—that’s reasons one and two—and three, my jet’s in for maintenance. And four: I did not shoot Alma.”