Nothing but Gossip (21 page)

If there are contests for belches, which I am quite sure there are, this one was an Olympic gold-medal contender. The windows rattled and the dog howled. Jerry patted his belly appreciatively.

“What exactly do you mean by haywire?” I asked once he’d stopped.

“Well, for instance, she’s got that big gun collection, and if the Fletchers’ maid didn’t get the trash barrels moved back in their garage the second the trash truck left, Alma would go out in her driveway and start using the barrels for target practice. She was a mean old bitch. We’re still convinced she poisoned our last dog. Probably has it stuffed and on display with all the rest of the things she’s killed.”

I
think the dog died of beer fumes. “Did she and Duke Fletcher ever make up?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure she never gave him any more money, but when Martha Belle died and then he left the Senate, he joined the board of Rutherford Oil, so they must have come to some sort of understanding.”

“What about her and Wade?”

“I miss old Wade. He’s a hell of a nice guy. One of my best buds.” He lobbed the beer can into a tall plastic barrel that had a big recycling emblem on its side. “You recycle?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you recycle? You know. Newspapers. Cans. Milk bottles. So forth.”

“Well, yes we do.”

“Waste of time, except aluminum. Unless you reuse, of course.” He popped open another Coors Light and proceeded to lecture me on the perils and costs of recycling.

“Did they fight?” I finally asked.

“Who? Alma and Wade? No more than most completely incompatible, unhappily married couples who hate each other’s guts. He always gave Alma a real wide berth. And a lot of the time, she’d be off traveling in Africa, had something going with some big-game hunter, and then she got real tight with Johnny Bourbon, the televangelist, you know him? He was hanging around a lot to keep her company. I’d hate to imagine how much money she gave those two. Wade and I played golf three, four times a week and, you know, he just never talked about her at all.”

“How is Wade’s business? Pretty strong?”

“Money machine. He slipped a little last year, got caught along with a lot of us in underestimating this whole Internet deal. Ford dealership started selling cars by computer. Can you imagine? You can just walk into your kitchen or wherever you’ve got your computer
and call up the dealer’s home page and just buy a damn truck. You could be sitting on the toilet and buy a damn truck. Oh, excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“It’s okay.”

I asked him a few more questions, but the answers were all inconclusive. No rumors. No gossip. This guy was loyal.

On my way back to the airport, I stopped in at the Northern Hotel, Billings’s only enduring landmark and, according to Wade’s neighbors, his bar of choice. I’d visited the place a number of times in the far past, and it had never changed—same whorehouse decor with run-through red carpet on the floor, grease-stained red-and-gold cut-velvet wallpaper, and a medium-large, hammered-bronze, Rank Organization-style gong to announce the arrival of flaming dishes, which included most things on the menu, and which meant that the lights in the dining room were constantly flashing on and off while the gong gonged and the waiter circled the room with flaming swords of shish kebab or chafing dishes of blazing lobster Newburg. The bar still had the same dead plants in its window and the same long bar rail lined with the same combination of local drunks, cowboys come to town to do their banking, and a few out-of-towners.

I ordered a Jameson’s neat, which won me an admiring once-over from the boys at the rail and the bartender, whose moustache was so long it looked as if he’d hung Spanish moss on his face.

“Do any of you fellas know Wade Gilhooly?” I asked, and then tossed off the shot.

“Sure,” one answered. “Everyone knows Wade Gilhooly. Who may I ask is asking?”

“I’m Lilly Bennett. I’m doing some work for Mr. Gilhooly, investigating his wife’s murder.”

“You’re a private investigator?” another asked.

“Yup, sure am.” I gave them a second or so to let that sink in. “Do any of you know if Mr. Gilhooly ever got into any fights?”

I decided to take the direct approach, because Westerners are not easily duped by pretty faces the way Southern gentlemen are, and I knew right off that these guys would tell me nothing and that sooner or later in this conversation I was going to have to pull rank and use threats to get what I was after. Besides, I was running out of time.

“Never.”

“How’d he get all those bruises on his face?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

“I hear his wife gave them to him, but I’d hate to think someone as well liked and charming and successful as Wade Gilhooly used to get rumbled on by his wife—it’s just unseemly, a man like that. I’d rather think he got into scuffles over the Broncos or the Minnesota Vikings. You sure he never got into fights in here?”

They all looked at each other and by mutual consent shook their heads at the same time, especially the one with the healing split lip.

“Okay, look, fellas,” I said. “Let’s cut the crap. You can tell me here now, or you can tell me in court. This is a murder investigation. You don’t want to be accused of obstructing justice, especially where your friend’s involved. Let me ask you one more time: Is Wade Gilhooly a brawler?”

*  *  *

My last stop was the Billings National Bank, where I scanned the Gilhoolys’ banking records for the last five years. Alma had moved so much money through there it was unimaginable. Millions and millions of dollars. It looked as if she used her checking account for everything. Huge deposits. Huge withdrawals, most of the most recent ones to the order of the SIBA Fund. Wade’s accounts, while sizable, were modest compared to Alma’s. I noticed what the neighbor was talking about in the Gilhooly GMC account. The business generated a huge amount of cash flow, but overall, deposits had been down significantly over the last two years.

Did it make a difference? I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure I had what I needed. At least I thought I did until my phone rang on the way back to the airport.

“Kennedy McGee’s escaped.”

I’ve never heard Jack Lewis sound so low in my life.

T
he setting sun burned through the windows as the helicopter raced south to Roundup and the Kendalls’ party, the first major event on the calendar of our wedding festivities. Tom and Sparky Kendall were our best friends, and I knew she had really pulled out all the stops for tonight’s black-tie dinner-dance bash.

“I just want to be sure all your out-of-town guests will be comfortable,” Sparky had said earlier. “Most of them think they’re going to have to survive on beef jerky and hardtack all weekend. But, by the time I’m done with them, they won’t think they’ve even left Palm Beach, until they get to the main event, of course.”

The Main Event. Thirty-six hours to go. I couldn’t wait. Once we lifted off, I hatched a double espresso— no way I could afford to slow down now. Do you know they have Starbucks in Billings? I can’t even believe it.

I rang up Richard on his car phone. “Hey,” I yelled over the engine noise. “What’s up?”

“On our way to the club.” His voice was tight.

“ ‘Our’ as in your parents?” I pulled off my boots and jeans.

“Yup. Where are you?”

I looked out the window. “Starting over the Bighorns. Is everything all right? Everybody happy?”

“Very, very happy.” His voice had that tone that implied he’d gotten a few things straightened out and everybody had decided to have a very fine time indeed.

I put on my stockings and black-suede heels. “I can’t wait to see you. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too. Hurry up. Everything’s fine.”

I slipped into my new navy-satin gown and had just finished hanging Grandmother’s diamonds around my neck and clipping on the matching earrings when we touched down on the putting green at the Roundup Country Club. Richard waited at the bottom of the steps to greet me in his double-breasted tuxedo, looking as if he’d just walked off a runway in Milan.

“Well?” he said after he’d kissed me and handed me a drink. “You don’t look like you’ve been in Montana. You look beautiful. Tell me what you found out.”

“I’m a lot closer. I think I’ve got a couple of people I can eliminate at least. Have you been here very long?”

“Only about five minutes. We stopped by to see Elias on the way over. He’s in and out, but Linda’s there holding his hand. We’ll go by and see him on our way home.”

I didn’t have the nerve to ask him about his parents, and frankly, even though I was excited about the party and all the rest of the festivities, I was also a little jittery and preoccupied and stressed out about Alma and Wade and Elias, and I didn’t much care about his parents at the moment. If they were upset, they’d just have to deal with it.

I tucked my arm through Richard’s and we joined
the party. Sparky had indeed outdone herself, filling the club with mounds of flowers—over the mantel was a cascade of white orchids so enormous it must have defoliated an entire tropical island, and the centerpieces on the dinner tables were small gardens of gerbera daisies surrounded by picket fences. Peter Duchin was playing the piano at top speed and talking at the top of his voice to some old friend or other from the Gulf Stream Club.

We said hello to our friends and finally made it through the crowd to Richard’s parents, who, while not exactly effusive, were certainly warmer than the last time I’d seen them. Once the perfunctory greetings were out of the way, Richard deserted me almost immediately for a conversation about grazing fees and water rights with his father, my father, and the governor. I was stranded with his mother.

“I’m so glad your brother is so much better,” Mrs. Jerome said. She had a very long, thin face, the longest neck I’ve ever seen in my life, and very high eyebrows, and when she pulled them all up at the same time, I felt as if I was about to have my eyes pecked out by a jeweled whooping crane. I tried to picture her in bed with Dean Martin. It would have made me want to shriek with laughter if her eyes hadn’t been cauterizing my face like Flash Gordon’s death rays. “We haven’t really gotten to know him well, or you either, for that matter. You’re always rushing off somewhere. I was concerned you might not make it this evening. You have such an exciting career.”

“Mrs. Jerome,” I said. This was ridiculous. I was nervous, my hands were sopped and shaking, my mouth was dry. “I want you to know something. I absolutely adore your son, and I’m going to take such
good care of him that he’ll think he lives in heaven. Believe me, it’s not always like this.”

“I know, dear.” Her tone was unsure. “Richard has never been so happy nor looked so well in his life. It’s just all so different from what we’re accustomed to, but Dick and I are thrilled for both of you.”

“Well, you sure don’t act like it,” I snapped. I’m sorry, but I was really tired and didn’t have time to break her down one teaspoonful of sugar at a time. This conversation was long past due. I had to establish my relationship with this woman now or I’d be forever doomed, and I wasn’t going to be browbeaten and intimidated. Life was too short. This was it. “All you do is frown at me. I’m actually a very nice person who happens to be going through a sort of rough, complicated patch at the moment—which I admit is all my own fault; I know I shouldn’t have taken this case, but I did—and I need friends right now, not foes. You’re supposed to be here loving me, not marching around looking like you just ate a lemon.”

Mrs. Jerome listened closely. People simply did not speak to her that way. This was a woman of power. But so was I. Her face betrayed nothing. I knew mine was red.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I’d stepped off the end of the board, and there was no crawling back. “But that’s the way it is. Right at the moment, you think you’d like a daughter-in-law you can mold and direct, someone who’ll convince your son to move back to Manhattan and have lunch at Mortimer’s and get involved in your charities. Well, he already tried that once, and it didn’t work out too well. And I’m nothing like that. I’m way too old to be anything but what I am—a cop from a good family. But I’m telling you, I’m going to be such a
terrific daughter-in-law you won’t be able to get enough of me.”

Everyone had drawn back, giving us plenty of room, and was ignoring us studiously. We were basically alone in this glittering crowd. Two wild sheep, dug in deep, about to smack our horns together.

“I know, deep down, Alida, if you were really the type who wanted some garden-club-joining, muffin-baking, bridge-playing, madras-skirted matronette as a daughter-in-law, you wouldn’t have a son like Richard in the first place. He’d be in some country-club bar somewhere back East in Greenwich rolling dice for drinks instead of out West roping steers and running the opera.”

Those eyebrows now quivered like batwings close to the chandelier, and I was afraid they were going to lift her right off the ground.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a chance. Come on along for the ride. We’ll have fun.”

The standoff continued for what seemed forever. But there was one thing I knew from watching and listening to my mother and being her daughter: When it comes to relationships, decide what it is you want. If it’s respect you’re after, meet power with power. Backbone with backbone. Eye with eye. And courage with courage. If I were ever going to win Alida Jerome’s respect, I had to meet her head on. And even if she wouldn’t admit it, she knew it, too.

I’d said my piece. Now all I could do was wait. It turned out to be only for a moment. I could tell she was thinking about what I’d said and using all her fortitude not to follow her first instinct: gather up her skirts and demand of her husband that she be taken home immediately. We looked into each other’s eyes. Her nostrils
flared slightly. Frankly, if I’d been her, I would have smacked me in the face.

“You know, I like you much better than you think I do. I always look like I’m frowning because I’m too vain to wear my glasses.” She put her hand on my cheek and studied my face. “But I’ve never known anyone quite like you before, never met quite such an independent spirit. Anyone quite so outspoken.” Her hand was gentle and cool. “We don’t exactly have people like you in New England.”