The Club

by Jane Heller

  “Oh, I have the strength, don’t you worry,” I said, brightening. “You know the old saying: ‘Where there’s a will there’s a lay.’”

  Tom came rushing over after I told him about my adventure in the elevator. Along for the ride were his partner, Detective Creamer, and several other officers, who combed the house for fingerprints, hair fibers, whatever.

  Hunt, Tom, and I sat in the living room, while I gave both of them a play-by-play of my eventful day. Then Tom and I went over the list of suspects from the club and discussed which of them may have broken into the house. Hunt remained silent until Ducky Laughton’s name came up.

  “Now wait a minute,” he said. “Ducky’s a business associate of mine. And a golf buddy. He’s a darn nice guy.”

  Hunt said things like “darn nice guy.” But hey, nobody’s perfect.

  “According to Judy, Mr. Laughton had a relationship with the deceased,” Tom pointed out.

  “That doesn’t mean he killed her, for God’s sake,” said Hunt.

  “Calm down, honey,” I said. “We don’t really know what happened between Ducky and Claire all those years ago. But it didn’t end well, that we know. And he didn’t stay at Berkeley, we know that too. He was kicked out because of some ‘trouble’ and never saw Claire again, until they ran into each other at the club.”

  “So?” said Hunt.

  “So, your wife is simply saying that there may be more to Mr. Laughton than meets the eye,” said Tom.

  “Look, Detective,” said Hunt. “I don’t need an interpreter to understand my wife. Besides, I know Ducky Laughton. He’s a vice president at Fitzgerald & Franklin. He’s a member of the club’s Finance Committee. He’s—”

  “Mr. Price,” Tom interrupted. “You said you were in your office all day today. Was Mr. Laughton there too?”

  Hunt thought for a minute. “Actually, no, not all day. I saw him in the morning, at about ten-thirty, but he left the office after that. He said he had some personal business to take care of.”

  Tom and I looked at each other.

  “What could be more personal than trapping your friend’s wife in her elevator?” I said.

  Hunt shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he said.

  “Look, everybody, let’s not jump to conclusions,” said Tom. “It will be easy enough to find out where Mr. Laughton was this afternoon. The same goes for all the other people you suspect, Judy.”

  “All the other people? How many are there?” said Hunt.

  “Half a dozen,” I said.

  Hunt turned to Tom. “It sounds like my wife has been doing the police’s job,” he said. “May I ask what you’ve been doing to solve this case?”

  “Sure. I’ve been interviewing everybody who had anything to do with Claire Cox,” said Tom. “Do you have any idea how many people that woman associated with? Well, I’ll tell you: hundreds. And I’ll tell you something else: this is a big case and my boss would really like to solve it—soon. I’m being pressured like you can’t believe. But now, after what happened here today, I think we can narrow the suspects list down to the people at your club. Somebody there threatened Judy, somebody who didn’t want her snooping around in his business.”

  “That doesn’t mean the guy killed Claire Cox,” Hunt said. “Maybe there’s something else he didn’t want Judy to find out about.”

  “Like what?” I said. “That he went in the pool without showering first?”

  Hunt shrugged.

  “Listen, we’re all tired,” said Tom, who turned to me. “Judy, the next time you go to the club, try to find out where—”

  “The next time she goes to the club?” Hunt said. “You don’t expect her to continue this informant thing after what’s happened, do you?”

  “Yes,” Tom said, “but a little more subtly. She’s about to help us solve the case. She’s got the murderer scared enough that he risked getting caught. Next time he’s going to make a mistake. And then we’ll nab him.”

  “What if the mistake he makes is killing Judy? Then what?” said Hunt.

  “I’m going to put a guy outside your house,” said Tom. “For protection. Nobody’s going to break in, believe me. I don’t want Judy hurt any more than you do, Mr. Price.”

  “I appreciate that, Detective, but what about when she leaves the house?” said Hunt. “What about when she goes snooping around at the club again? Who’s going to protect her then, huh?”

  Simultaneously and without missing a beat, Tom and I looked at Hunt and said, “You are.”

  Surprisingly, Hunt went for it. No, not at first, but gradually, after Tom and I convinced him that helping me with my informant duties wouldn’t be a betrayal of his friends at The Oaks but rather a chance for him to protect me and help the police with their murder investigation, he agreed. He was on the club’s Finance Committee, after all, and had a much wider circle of contacts there than I did. With his help, the murderer might be brought to justice that much sooner, Tom pointed out.

  “Just think! We’ll be working together to solve a crime,” I said to Hunt as we lay in bed an hour or so after Tom and the other cops had left. “We’ll be like Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers on ‘Hart to Hart.’”

  “What’s the matter with Nick and Nora Charles?”

  “Nothing. We’ll be like them too.”

  I hugged Hunt. He was being a good sport. I knew how much he loved the club, how hard it would be for him to finger one of the members as Claire’s murderer.

  “Boochie?” I said as I snuggled next to him under the covers. “Boochie” was the little love name we called each other when we were feeling amorous. Sometimes we shortened it to “Booch” and sometimes we lengthened it to “Boochikins,” but you get the point.

  “Yes, Booch?” Hunt said as he kissed the tip of my nose.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too,” he said.

  “I love you as much as ever,” I said.

  “I love you more than ever,” he said.

  “I love you in ways that—”

  Hunt silenced me by pressing his lips on mine. For the next fifteen minutes or so, we did nothing but give each other wet, sloppy, overheated, groin-stirring soul kisses, one overlapping into the next. There was barely time to breathe! It was wonderful, as if we couldn’t get enough of each other, couldn’t tear our mouths away from each other. I knew I’d missed having intimate contact with Hunt, but I hadn’t realized how much until those kisses.

  “I want to touch you,” Hunt murmured. “All over.”

  He began to undress me, and I began to undress him. Never very adept at this part of the sex act—the undressing one’s partner part—Hunt fumbled with the buttons on my blouse and I fumbled with the buckle on his belt. Then I fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and he fumbled with the hooks on my bra. Eventually, we got where we wanted to be, which was naked.

  “Oh, you are so beautiful, Boochie,” said Hunt as he appraised my body. “I’m a lucky, lucky man.”

  Boy, did flattery turn me on. I reached out and touched Hunt’s throbbing, outstretched manhood.

  “No,” I purred. “I’m the lucky one.”

  We made love for what seemed like an eternity, although the entire thing probably lasted no more than twenty minutes.

  “We really should do this more often,” said Hunt as we lay in each other’s arms, basking in the afterglow.

  “How much more often?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe two, three, four times a day. Something like that,” said Hunt.

  “What about your golf?” I asked. “How will you fit me in?”

  He rolled over and kissed me. Then he put my hand on his sex organ, which, I was surprised to find, had bounced back in a big way. “No, Booch,” he whispered in my ear. “The question is, How will you fit me in?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m willing to give it a try,” I said. “Come here.”

  We were up to our old tricks, Hunt and I,
making love, then making jokes, then making love all over again, just like we used to. When I finally fell asleep, after another, especially satisfying go-around, Claire and The Oaks and my aborted elevator ride were the farthest things from my mind. What was on my mind, as I passed into dreamland, was that I had my husband back, and that together, we could solve anything—even a murder.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tom stopped by at nine o’clock the next morning. He wanted us to know that he’d put a man outside to watch the house. He also wanted to give us some advice.

  “Don’t tell anyone about the break-in,” he said. “Especially anyone at The Oaks. Just go there and make small talk and see what happens. I’m betting that whoever gave you that warning in the elevator is getting very nervous. And if he’s nervous, he’s going to make a mistake and reveal himself.”

  “Or herself,” I added.

  “Herself? Do you really think one of the women at the club could have killed Claire?” asked Hunt.

  I shrugged. “Larkin’s a nut case when it comes to tennis. I wouldn’t put it past her to knock off her only real rival. And then there’s Nedra. First I thought maybe she wanted Claire out of the way so Ducky wouldn’t start up with her again. Now I think Nedra doesn’t give a damn about Ducky. Maybe Nedra and Rob were worried that Claire would get him fired and ruin their cozy little arrangement. Maybe they were the ones who killed her—and broke into our house. Let’s not forget that it was Nedra who chewed me out for being such a busybody at the club.”

  “What about Ducky?” said Hunt. “You two mentioned him as a possible suspect, but he couldn’t have killed anybody. I’ve known him for years and he’s a super guy. Easygoing, no temper. He doesn’t even get mad on the golf course—and that’s saying something.”

  “I agree with you, Mr. Price,” said Tom. “I don’t think he’s a killer either. All we’ve got on him is that he and Claire were lovers years ago and that she broke it off. Not a big deal. I’m more interested in Brendan, the chef, and the fact that he’s the secret son of a big shot at The Oaks—a big shot who happened to be a relative of the deceased. Something’s fishy there.”

  “We’ll do our best to find out what it is, Detective,” said Hunt, showing off his new cooperative spirit. It’s amazing what getting laid after a long drought can do for a person’s mood. Hunt was positively buoyant—for him.

  “Please call me Tom, Mr. Price,” said Tom.

  “Sure, Tom. And I’m Hunt,” said Hunt.

  “And I’m going into the kitchen to make coffee,” I said, and left the two of them to chat. When I came back into the living room, they were smiling and patting each other on the back and acting like long-lost buddies.

  “He’s not a bad guy,” Hunt acknowledged when we were alone. “Did you know he was Bill Cunningham’s son? Bill Cunningham, the guy from Pubtel?”

  I nodded. “I think they’re estranged though,” I said.

  “Estranged or not, Tom comes from money. He told me he’s thinking of getting into the Market. We decided that when this case is all over, I’m going to set up an account for him at F&F.”

  I looked at Hunt and shook my head. The man had tunnel vision when it came to people: anyone who breathed was a potential client.

  “I still think he’s got the hots for you, Jude,” he went on. “I can tell by the way he looks at you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “He’s just lonely. His wife was killed, and I don’t think he’s been serious about anyone since.”

  “Killed? What a tough break,” said Hunt as he put his arms around me. “If he loved her half as much as I love you, he must be very lonely. I’d be lost without you, Booch.”

  “Not to worry,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  After a man from Southern New England Telephone came to restore our severed phone line, Hunt spent a couple of hours talking to his office and giving whoever was on the other end very specific instructions regarding cattle and corn and soybeans. On our second line, I called Valerio, to whom I hadn’t spoken in a week or so.

  “How eez my beautiful Judy?” he asked. “Eez she ready to divorce that husband of hers?”

  “I’m fine, how are you?” I said, ignoring the Casanova routine as I always did.

  “How am I?” he said. “Righta now, not so good.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I caught my sous-chef with his hand in the cookie jar,” he said.

  “He was stealing money from the restaurant?”

  “That’s right. Not only that, he was making me look bad to my customers. I’m telling you, Judy, running a restaurant eez no picnic.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. How did you find out what he was up to?”

  “I tasted his bolognese sauce.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Eet was sheet.”

  “So?”

  “So I make my bolognese sauce with ground veal. Eet gives a richer tasta. But this guy used grounda beef. Chopped chuck, would you believe!”

  “Valerio, just because he deviated from your recipe doesn’t make him a thief.”

  “You don’t get it,” he said, impatient and accentless. “I buy the best, most expensive milk-fed veal you can get, and this guy packs it up, takes it home, and serves the chuck to my customers!”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “I hope you fired him.”

  “Of course, I fired him. But now I have to find somebody to replace him.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard, should it? I mean, there are so many people out there looking for jobs in this age of consolidating and downsizing and laying off. I should know.”

  “Yes, but it’s hard to find an honest person in the restaurant business. Everybody lies and cheats and steals. There are scams going on all the time. I’m thinking of selling the restaurant and devoting all my time to writing cookbooks, going on talk shows, and letting your husband make me rich in the commodities market.”

  “Selling the restaurant? But you put your life’s blood into that place.”

  “Yeah, and now I want to stop the bleeding. You have no idea how much shit goes on when you own a restaurant. This thing with the sous-chef is just the latest horror story. Last year, when I was on my book tour, I put my chef in charge of buying the food. Disaster. Complete disaster.”

  “Why? What happened? Didn’t he buy the best quality?”

  “No, but he said he did.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He spent the restaurant’s money—my money—on prime meats and free-range chicken and fresh fish, but what he had delivered to the restaurant was your basic, garden variety, supermarket crap.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Valerio laughed. “Judy, my darling. It’s a good thing you’re beautiful because you sure are naive. The man had a kickback scam going with the food boys. They billed us for top quality, sold us shit, and pocketed the difference—a percentage for the boys, a much bigger percentage for my chef.”

  “That’s awful. How did you find out about it?”

  “My accountant figured it out. I used to complain that he charged too much, but he saved me a lot of grief.”

  “Did you really need him to figure out that you were being ripped off? I mean, couldn’t you taste the food and tell that the ingredients weren’t up to your standards?”

  “If I’d been there,” said Valerio. “But thanks to Charlton House, I was getting up at five o’clock in the morning to show the viewers of ‘Good Morning, Cleveland’ how to prepare my Swordfish with Pistachio Nuts.” He paused, waiting for my reaction. There was none, because I was deep in my own thoughts, busily pondering the implications of his little anecdote, wondering if Brendan Hardy might be pulling the same stunt on The Oaks as Valerio’s chef had pulled on him. “Judy? Are you there?”

  “Oh, sorry. Yes, I’m here.” My mind raced. If Brendan was ripping off The Oaks and Claire found out about it, wouldn’t that have given her an added reason for wanting
him out of the club—and in jail? And wouldn’t that have given him a real motive for killing her?

  “Well, enough about me,” said Valerio. “Tell me how you are, my gorgeous creature.”

  “Valerio, listen,” I said. “Remember when you came up to Connecticut the Friday before July Fourth?”

  “Of course I remember. You picked me up at the train. You were wearing a short little white skirt.”

  “Right. And Hunt and I took you to our country club for dinner, remember?”

  “How could I forget? The fooda was sheet.”

  “Exactly. But you didn’t say anything about the possibility that we were being ripped off, that our chef was doing the same thing to the members as your chef was doing to you.”

  “No, why should I? I just assumed that your club was like a lot of WASP clubs: great golf course, all the booze you can drink, lousy food. I figured the chef was a dud—period—and that, since members at a place like that don’t care what they eat, nobody noticed. Anyway, why should I suspect something about some country club I don’t belong to? Hunt said he was on the Finance Committee there, right? He’d know if something funny was going on. At least, that’s what he said.”

  Yeah, but would he know? He was a commodities broker, not an accountant. Besides, he didn’t know a thing about restaurants. You could tell him that the broiled flounder on his plate was fillet of horse mackerel and he wouldn’t blink. What’s more, he didn’t even manage our family finances—I did. The last time he handled our tax returns, we were audited, for God’s sake. He couldn’t spot a restaurant scam if it hit him in the face.

  And neither could the other members of the Finance Committee, I was sure. Evan Sutcliffe, the head of the committee and the club’s treasurer, was in the Christmas tree business, and Logan Marshall was a former ambassador to Uruguay. Addison Bidwell didn’t do much of anything except fritter away the family trust fund. And then, of course, there was Ducky, who worked with Hunt at F&F and knew about things like cattle and gas and crude oil. What did any of them know about running a country club and its three restaurants? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And the truth was, nobody cared whether anybody knew anything. These CEOs and former ambassadors and perennial trust-fund user-uppers came to the club every weekend to play golf, to see their friends, to score points with people who could help them in some way, to relax, be seen, hang out. The last thing they wanted to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon was sit in a hot, stuffy room and pore over the club’s dining room receipts. Why not just sign the checks, pay the bills, and leave all the tough stuff to the accountants, who did the books once a year?