Rubout (10 page)

I’d probably like it, because I was too dumb to know any better. After all, I grew up Catholic. Endora had no idea she’d just insulted two religions. Talking with Endora could set my South Side teeth on edge. She gave me the names of two of Sydney’s friends, but one lived in Chicago. She also gave me her son’s new address, although Endora didn’t know the phone number. Then her phone rang, and Endora had an excuse to dismiss me. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ve been expecting this call. Come back if you need anything.”

It was only after I got back to my desk that I realized Endora really hadn’t told me much, except that Hudson had a lot of affairs and a lot of money. Both were ways of bragging. Endora really was one of them. If I was going to find out anything, I needed to talk to someone who knew Ladue but didn’t live there.

Who did I know who would fit that description? I opened my brown leather Filofax and began paging through it. It wasn’t until I got to the Ps that I found the right person: Jinny Peterson. Jinny was an engaging redhead who lived in Kirkwood. If
Father Knows Best
was shot today, it would be set in Kirkwood, and Jinny’s white clapboard house with the black
shutters, red front door, and—I swear—white picket fence, would be perfect. Jinny might be just a little too sexy for the fatherly insurance agent, Jim Anderson, though. Besides, she had a sense of humor, and I didn’t see Jim living with any woman who might laugh at him. Jinny was on half a dozen boards, from KWMU, the public radio station, to a battered women’s shelter, and a children’s museum. She didn’t have major money. What Jinny contributed was time and hard labor. She would make zillions of calls, find volunteers, and volunteer herself.

She also loved to swap information. It was too detailed and too accurate to be ordinary gossip. Jinny knew everyone, and if she didn’t, she’d call around until she found someone who did.

She answered her phone after two rings. “Help!” I said. “I’m supposed to write about Sydney Vander Venter’s murder. I need background information on the Vander Venter family.”

“Well, I knew her as someone to nod to at charity events,” she said. “She was always nice—which is a word no one in Ladue uses. Too middle class, my dear. I can give you lots of gossip about the mother-in-law, Elizabeth.”

“Just what I need. I’m going to try to interview her.”

“Then come on over,” Jinny said. “I’ve just made a cheesecake and I’ll put on a pot of tea.”

People who lived in
Father Knows Best
houses also bake. Jinny’s home, like anyplace you’d want to live in St. Louis, was only twenty minutes from downtown. She lived in the West County corridor that
Gazette
advertisers lusted after. Kirkwood was a more
generous and less exclusive community than Ladue. It didn’t expect its citizens to join country clubs. It provided them with a public swimming pool, a community center, a recycling center, and recreational programs for the kids. It had big old homes with wide summery porches, shady trees, and old-fashioned gardens. Unlike my neighborhood, Kirkwood had no slums, no panhandlers, and its drug dealers didn’t wear scary, baggy clothes. I would have died of boredom if I lived there. But Jinny loved its pretty perfection. Half an hour after I called her, I was in her kitchen, which had blue ruffled curtains. She put a plate of cinnamon-sprinkled cheesecake and a teapot on the maple table. It was my week for tea.

“Why is your teapot wearing a sweater?” I asked.

“That’s a tea cozy,” she said. “It keeps the tea warm.” Even the tea was cozy here. I was fascinated by this normalness.

“I figured you’d be good to talk to because you know Ladue,” I said, “but you don’t live there.”

Jinny shuddered. “God forbid. I view Ladue with jaundiced amusement.”

“Just what I need. Along with another hunk of cheesecake, please. Tell me about Sydney’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth. Endora avoided the subject.”

“Probably scared of her,” Jinny said seriously. “Queen Elizabeth has the power of banishment.”

“That’s her nickname, huh?”

“Not to her face, no one, not even her husband, ever called her Liz. By the way, I heard her late husband was gay. Just a rumor. I don’t have a single fact to back it up, but I happen to believe it’s true.” Jinny graded her gossip. She’d tell you if it was Grade A
reliable information, Grade B rumors mixed with facts, or simply wild speculation.

“She looks formidable,” I said. “She’s a prime example of old Ladue money, right?”

“Absolutely. Elizabeth lives on the grounds of the St. Louis Country Club, which as you know is one of the most exclusive addresses in Ladue. I heard from several
very
reliable sources that Southwestern Bell moved its headquarters from St. Louis to San Antonio because that country club refused to admit Bell executives.”

“You can’t mean that. The telephone company would hurt the St. Louis economy and uproot all those people for a ridiculous reason like that?”

“It wasn’t ridiculous to them. We’re talking social life or death. One Ladue woman told me, ‘That’s why we have Old Warson Country Club, for corporate people.’ Whether it’s true or not, people out here believe that story, which is almost the same thing as being true.”

“How old is Elizabeth?” I asked, subtly steering the conversation back to the topic.

“She says she’s sixty-two, but she went to school with my friend Carol, and Carol says Elizabeth is somewhere in her late sixties. She dresses like the real Queen Elizabeth in expensive, dowdy clothes. The last time I ran into her was a perfect example. She was going to the Women’s Exchange in Ladue, probably for a liquid lunch: martinis and their fresh vegetable soup. She was wearing Barbara Bush pearls and a powder-blue Adolpho suit made to look like Chanel. I think the pearls were fake, but the alligator handbag was real.”

“One reptile calls to another,” I said.

“Oh, but her lizard brain is sharp. Although Elizabeth rarely goes to the firm’s office, I hear she is the real investment genius in that family. When her husband was alive, she used to advise him regularly. She never forgave him for not taking her tip about buying a local wonder-drug company in the sixties, and she’d often remind him of his error in public. Her son did not make his father’s mistake. Hudson follows her advice religiously. In fact, he does everything his mother says. Carol told me Elizabeth even has a key to his house and drops in when she feels like it—poor Sydney. What a life she must have had with that husband and that mother-in-law. Naturally, Hudson has a key to his mother’s place and frequently lunches or takes tea with her, on those days when she’s not lunching out or playing tennis or bridge.”

“I heard Elizabeth was so tight she squeaked. But when I asked Endora, she sidestepped the question.”

Jinny rolled her eyes. “Tight? That woman throws pennies around like manhole covers. I was brought up to know how to save a buck, but this woman is beyond shame. I was at a lunch for the battered women’s shelter, and Queen Elizabeth was there. She ate the salad, then called for extra rolls and asked for them to be boxed with her chicken entree and potato. She actually told people she would have them for that night’s dinner!”

“No! With her money?”

“Yep, yep, and wait till you hear this. Carol, my friend who went to school with her, told me Elizabeth charged her housekeeper, Cordelia, seven dollars
for a leftover ham in the refrigerator when she went to Europe for three weeks.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I am not. Cordelia was outraged. She told Carol’s housekeeper.”

“Who told you. Well, did Cordelia buy the ham?”

“Sure. It was a whole ham with only a slice or two out of it. It was still cheaper than she could get it at Schnucks.” Jinny lowered her voice, the cue that her next bit was really good. “Now, a writer friend who must remain nameless told me this one. He said Elizabeth had deviled eggs as one of the hors d’oeuvres at a party for an English horn soloist. The soloist was a guest artist at the symphony, staying at her house. At a party after his performance, a maid in a black uniform passed the eggs and little puff pastries and things around on a silver tray. The writer was invited to the party. The writer came back to interview the soloist in the morning, and Elizabeth served the musician those same deviled eggs for his breakfast. Isn’t that the limit?”

“Eeccch. Recycled eggs. With all her millions she couldn’t pick up some bagels and fresh fruit at the store?”

“How do you think she keeps her millions?” Jinny asked. “Here’s another good one. Last year, when I worked at the Charity Designer Resale Show, she donated a ballgown with sweat-stained armpits and a waterstained hemline. Elizabeth said it was an Oscar de la Renta—which it was, although it was older than God—and demanded a tax write-off of $2,000. We had a special meeting about it. Finally we gave her the tax letter, because no one wanted to offend
someone as powerful as Elizabeth, but we refused to put the dress out for sale. We have standards. It was too shabby.”

“If she’s so tight, what’s the secret of her power?”

“Elizabeth is very good at getting other people to donate to her pet charities. She also makes highly visible donations to local charities. She knows exactly where her money will be the most welcome. She gives away about a hundred thousand dollars each year, usually in $10,000 amounts. You can make a real hit if you give $10,000 to KWMU—that’s major money for public radio—or the University of Missouri at St. Louis, Lindenwood College, or the zoo. Her name appears in the symphony programs as part of the Slatkin Circle, and she always donates in their $10,000 to $14,999 category. You can bet she gives exactly $10,001 to qualify for the circle.”

“She sounds shrewd.”

“Exactly. Elizabeth is smart, clever, cold, and most of all, cheap. Never forget that last one. It’s the key to everything.”

“South Siders are frugal, but we’d be embarrassed to be that cheap. We’d never skimp on food for guests—or ourselves, for that matter.”

“South Siders know how to do things,” Jinny said. “They can fix toilets, clean houses, repair cars and run computers, and they get paid for those skills. Elizabeth’s family hasn’t held a real job for generations. Their money works for them. Anything happens to it, they don’t have the skills to work at Steak ’n Shake. All they know how to do is hang on to every nickel. That saves them from a fate worse than death—a job.”

Jinny said this with such feeling, I knew she wasn’t just talking about South Siders. Elizabeth chaired the committees and took the credit in the newspaper stories, but it was people like Jinny who dealt with the caterer for the fundraiser, tried to find employment and child care for the women at the shelter, and tried to fire up the legal system so the women would have the needed restraining orders, separation agreements, and child support.

“One more story,” said Jinny, “and then I have to throw you out and start fixing dinner for the Mister.”

That was another reason I couldn’t live in
Father Knows Best
land. I didn’t have a dependable schedule. Lyle would starve to death if he waited for me to have dinner on the table when he got home.

“I’ve saved the best till last,” Jinny said. “I wouldn’t believe this story if I hadn’t heard it from my friend Pat. She deals in antiques. She was on Highway 67, on her way to the antique stores in Alton, Illinois, and she passed the Discount Barn in West Alton. She saw Elizabeth there.”

“Elizabeth was at the Barn? You’re making this up.

“I swear. Pat recognized her from her picture in Babe’s column. She knew she had to be somebody because the woman had the only Buick Park Avenue in the Discount Barn parking lot, and she was wearing a black wool pantsuit with pearls and a silk scarf.”

I choked on my tea. The Barn’s regular customers drove pickups or big, old clunkers. Designer duds at the Discount Barn were jeans and a clean T-shirt. The Discount Barn is the last frontier of shopping,
the third world of discount stores. It sells purple bathtubs, cheap carpet, and wallpaper by the pound. Also odd lots of auto and motorcycle parts, and offbeat bargains like cucumber soap and Jimmy Swaggart sermons. My rehabber friends couldn’t live without the place, but they’re looking for buys on plumbing, paint, and paneling. I like it because it’s so wacky. Your average West Countian wouldn’t be caught dead at the Barn.

“Let me guess. She was buying a plywood bathroom vanity.”

“She was buying auto supplies. Pat pulled off the road to get a better look, because she knew she had a scoop. She said Elizabeth was ordering some kid to load up her trunk with cases of windshield solvent, antifreeze, and motor oil. She had three cases of Exxon motor oil. Pat thinks Elizabeth is so cheap she changes her own oil. Can you imagine?”

“No. I go to the gas station to have my license plates put on. I wonder how much dust the Barn’s dirt driveway left on her car?”

“Won’t make any difference. She’ll have her yardman wash the car. And while we’re talking about driveways, my husband is going to be in mine soon.”

So it was time for me to go. I thanked her for the tea and the good talk. All the way home I wondered what it would be like to live with a man who wanted dinner on the table at the same time every night.