Nothing but Gossip (19 page)

The rest of us stayed behind. Linda—who’d stationed herself outside the surgical-area door—started her tenth full rosary.

Ever since he’d arrived, Duke had had his eye on Mr. Jerome, waiting for the right time to hit him up for a donation to his presidential campaign. But now, with most of the crowd gone and everything in position for him to make his move, Tiffany had attached herself to Duke, and while he was a tall man, maybe six-four, Tiffany, in her high heels, met him eye to eye, emoting into his face in an explicit sort of way. He gaped back as though she were a she-devil trying to trap him and wreck his whole life and career. I knew how he felt—the Jeromes had been exchanging similarly knowing glances about me for quite a while.

“I can’t wait till you’re President, Senator Duke. Do you really think you’re going to win?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, madam,” he said to Tiffany, whose a ward-winning muscles strained against her skintight, miniskirted business suit with all the power of a tropical sunrise. She had hidden her blond locks beneath a short, spiky black wig, and that, combined with her exaggerated black eye makeup and dark red lips, made her look like a rock star.

“What’s that, sir?” she asked.

“You’re wanting to sit on my lap and get your picture taken with me like that Madonna Rice girl with Gary Hart on the monkey boat down there in Florida. Well, sugar, it ain’t gonna work.”

“See what I mean, everybody?” Tiffany smiled around the room. “He will be a great President. This man is power. This man is America.” She tossed her arm around his shoulders and squeezed all the wind right out of him.

Richard’s mother gasped. But I truly had the feeling it might have been to smother a laugh.

“I was very surprised to see your name on the
SIBA
list,” I said to Duke once I’d finished my second piece of cake, which was semigood except that the little yellow icing ducks made it way too sweet. Unfortunately, anxiety makes me hungry. I have never in my life been too upset to eat, and the longer Elias was in surgery, the hungrier I got.

“What are you talking about?”

“We obtained a printout of all the
SIBA
Fund investors, and your name was included.”

“Now, hold on there, Lilly girl. Is this a joke?” He glanced nervously at Mr. Jerome—who could open the
door to millions and millions and who was now listening with grim intensity—and gave him a knowing smile.

I shook my head. “No. Your name is there.”

“Well, that’s some kind of damn mistake. The
SIBA
Fund stands for everything I detest, and I would not put one penny of my money toward their efforts. Even their name, Siberian Associates, is misleading, because they don’t give a damn about Siberia or Siberians or the delicate Siberian environment. If my name appears, it means the little commie rats are desperate and are trying to sabotage my reputation. Little underhanded, red-ass peckerheads. They couldn’t do an honest day’s business if their lives depended on it.”

I believed him, but I’m not so sure about Richard’s father, who ripped into a celery stick like a lion devouring a bloody leg.

Pretty soon everyone was gone except for our families and Linda. We all sat quietly and read. Nobody spoke. I didn’t care who’d shot Alma or Elias, I only wanted him well. As far as I was concerned, I was off the case.

Moments later, Jack paged me. I called him back. “How’s Elias?” he asked.

“No word yet.”

“We picked up Kennedy McGee at the airport getting on a plane for L.A., and I’ve got him down here in custody. He’s trying to track down Paul Decker, who should be here anytime. We’ll start the questioning in about an hour if you’d like to join us.”

“Nah. I don’t think you need my help. I’m just going to hang around here, but thanks for the offer.”

After a while, Wade drifted back in. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He kept hanging around, as though Alma’s death were an unimportant
sidebar to his day. Finally, when Elias went into his third hour of surgery, I told Wade to take off. This had become a family affair, and we needed some privacy.

“Come on.” I led him to the bank of elevators. “I’ll walk you to your car. You need to make some arrangements for Alma’s funeral.”

“Done,” he said.

“Done?” I looked at my watch. “She’s only been dead for an hour.”

“I made the arrangements yesterday. We all knew she didn’t have a chance.”

Outside, it was wrongly bright and sunny and warm, and life chugged along around us. He opened the door of the Caddy and sat down, but Tiffany was not there waiting for him. Probably eloped with Dwight. “Friday. Cowboy Cathedral. Two o’clock.”

“I can’t remember if I told you,” I said. “Everything’s been happening so fast. But the police arrested Kennedy McGee at the airport.”

He smiled. “That’s great. I hope he gets the chair. Case closed.” He placed his hand softly on top of mine. “Lilly, I sure hope Elias is okay. Will you call me when he gets out of surgery?”

“Of course. Oh, I almost forgot about this. What do you make of it?” I removed the crinkled, torn envelope from my pocket and smoothed it out across the chrome and red leather of his steering wheel. “Is this your handwriting?” I pointed to the word M
C
G
EE
, scrawled in blue ball-point ink.

“Yes, where did you get that?” A flush crept up Wade’s neck, turning the wedge-shaped burn scar into a snow-white spade.

“I found it in a supply closet off the ballroom. I think the gunman waited in the closet. What was in the envelope?”

“That fucking McGee. He said he’d give me his proxy to vote against the Russian deal and leave town if I gave him a hundred thousand dollars in cash. So I did. And once I handed him the envelope, he told me the Russians had given him ten times that much and to go fuck myself. I’d like to kill that son of a bitch.”

“Why would he try to kill me or Elias?”

Wade considered the question. “I don’t know. Maybe he was trying to disrupt the meeting and wasn’t exactly aiming at anybody. The votes were going in the company’s favor and he knew the Russians would rip his balls off if they’d given him a million in hard dollars and he didn’t deliver. Even Kennedy isn’t naive enough to think the Russian character has changed along with their politics. Their approach has always been fists first. Questions if you survive.” He hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “I feel ridiculous giving him all that money. You know what’s wrong with me? I’ve been living in Montana too long, gotten to trust people too much. I’ve turned into a country boy leaving a trail of dollar bills behind me. People see me coming a hundred miles off. Oh, here comes that dopy Wade Gilhooly. He’s such a sucker, you can trick him into anything.”

With that he slapped his hands on top of his head and slumped down in his seat. He looked so small and vulnerable and taken-advantage-of that I wanted to comfort him. What was it about Wade that, in spite of his Dark Ages chauvinism, sexism, and general crudity, made women want to protect him? He was Peck’s Bad Boy, naughty as could be with freckles on his nose, a frog in his pocket, the gift of blarney, and the physical grace and easy elegance of Fred Astaire.

“Well”—he started the engine—“thanks again for
everything. I’m really sorry about Elias. I hope he’s okay. I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”

“Me, too.”

“I know you and Alma weren’t exactly friends, but I hope you’ll come to the funeral anyway.”

“I’ll be there.”

It wasn’t true, what I said earlier about not caring who shot Alma or Elias. I cared a lot, and the more time passed, the madder I was getting. Someone was going to pay for this mess and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be one of us.

I didn’t believe for one second that Kennedy McGee had perpetrated any of these actions. But at least if everyone else did, the killer might relax, and maybe we’d get a few mistakes happening on our side.

Hours later, I stood at Elias’s bedside in the recovery room. Christian and I had each given him a pint of blood, and they’d taken the rest—seven pints in all—out of the blood bank. He was still unconscious and, according to the doctor, would be for some time. But he would survive.

“As a matter of fact,” the doctor told us, “I expect him to bounce back fairly quickly. Won’t be able to use his arm for quite a while, but that shouldn’t slow him down much. He’s strong as an ox.”

Richard followed me into the hall, where I leaned against the wall. I felt drained. Maybe it was just the blood donation, or, more likely, maybe it was that, along with the wedding, Richard’s parents, their total immersion into the eccentric irascibility of life in the Bennett family, and the adrenaline crash of safety.

“I’m going to take my parents back to the hotel,” Richard told me as the stone-faced battleships tugged
impatiently at their halyards, moored as they were to the elevator, foul-weather gear, purse, and umbrella on full alert. “I’ll meet you back at the ranch. Will you be all right?”

What could I say? No?

“I think your mother hates me.”

“Believe me, if my mother didn’t like you, we’d know.”

I peeked around the corner to where Mrs. Jerome’s umbrella was pointed at my forehead like a sixteen-inch cannon on the
Missouri
. “If you say so.”

“Listen to me, Lilly.” Richard put his hands on the wall on either side of me and his face close to mine. His lips were so close they started to melt me. “Your mother isn’t exactly a picnic. But now that I’ve gotten to know your parents, I love them. Keep this in mind when you look at my parents: While my father was away in the war, my mother had a flagrant affair with Dean Martin. Met him at the Stork Club every night. Big scandal. And my father still carries black-and-white snapshots in his wallet of Tahitian natives whose breasts come to their knees. Friends from his tour in the Pacific.”

I peeked at them again. “Maybe they just have jet lag.”

“Maybe they’re just worried about your brother. Maybe their clenched jaws have absolutely nothing to do with you. Think about it.”

Deep in the pocket of my scrubs, my phone buzzed.

“How’s Elias?” Jack asked.

“He’s going to be fine.”

“Glad to hear it. When will you be down to talk to your friend?”

“He’s not my friend, and I already told you, I don’t think I’ll be there.”

“Well, we found a Russian-English dictionary in his luggage, so we’ve got a good start. Why don’t you come down tomorrow at ten? Paul Decker’s out of town, so that’s the soonest he can get here anyhow.”

“Thanks, I’ll think about it. Don’t wait for me, though.”

I had other ideas. I wished I’d been able to talk with the Russians, but by the time I called the Grand they’d checked out, and when I called the AMR Combs hangar I learned the
SIBA
Fund’s G-4 corporate jet had taken off just half an hour after the shooting. So our big drunken grizzlies had slipped through the net and vanished into the big blue. By now they would be at forty-five thousand feet over Canada, making bear tracks for Moscow and completely out of our reach.

T
he morning line on Elias was extremely optimistic— they’d keep him one more day—and after checking in on him, I went downtown.

“Well, look who’s here,” Kennedy McGee snorted over his shoulder when I entered the interrogation room. “Nancy Drew.”

“Nice to see you, too, Mr. McGee.” I put my purse and a double espresso from Starbucks on the conference table.

Cigarette burns and ridges from handcuffs slammed on its surface by infuriated, wrongly incarcerated prisoners scarred and cracked the gray Formica. Along the center of the table, sealed in plastic bags, lay the Colt .45 that had been used to murder Alma, the Weatherby rifle that had shot Elias, and a small bright-yellow plastic Langenscheidt Russian-English, English-Russian pocket dictionary. Another zip-top held what looked like the prisoner’s personal effects.

Opposite me sat Paul Decker, and he didn’t look too happy to be there. Maybe he didn’t know about McGee’s
fifty-thousand shares in Rutherford Oil and thought that the Great White Hunter’s fiduciary prospects were slim, unable to provide even a fraction of Paul’s customary retainer. If it hadn’t taken place already, I imagined that a serious conversation with his client about exactly where McGee intended to get the money to pay him was close on the horizon.

It would have been nice to believe that Paul’s bad humor had to do with the fact that his client was accused of shooting Elias, one of Paul’s best friends, and maybe he would have trouble defending him. But my years of experience with defense lawyers had taught me that even if the client had shot the attorney’s mother, if the client could pay, the attorney would defend.

“Morning, Counselor,” I said.

“Marshal,” he answered.

McGee, decked out in jailhouse orange, was slouched in his seat, glowering up at the slice of sky visible through the high, wire-mesh windows. He had chewed his fingernails completely off. He was scared, and I didn’t blame him.

The evidence seemed strong. And now that I’d had a night to sleep on it, and now that Elias was going to be all right, it was possible to assemble the pieces in my head more calmly and rationally. Pieces that could be fitted for the shooter to be Kennedy: He’d been at both scenes. At least one of the weapons was his. He had clear motive to shoot Alma, though little or none to shoot Elias or me. But maybe Wade’s theory about the Russians’ payoff had been correct and he had to find a way to stop the meeting before the vote was complete. The dictionary that could have been used to compose the ersatz Russian threat was in his possession.

I couldn’t say one way or the other. A lot depended on the upcoming interrogation.

Directly across from Kennedy, a guard stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, feet slightly spread, and watched him, a measure of reverence in his gaze. I wondered how many people observed us through the mirrored wall panel. The large round clock above it read a minute before ten.