The Club

by Jane Heller

  “What’s this all about, Price?” asked Brendan.

  I nudged Tom. Brendan’s dropping the “Mr.” when he spoke to Hunt was not a good sign. But then men often called each other by their last name, I reminded myself. It was a macho thing. You never hear women do that. You never hear women say: “I hear Goldberg is pregnant.” Or: “Rudinsky just had her third face-lift.” Maybe Brendan’s “What’s this all about, Price?” wasn’t hostile, just male.

  “I know you’ve got a little kickback scheme going here at the club,” Hunt continued. “More than one. You’ve got the Rheinhardt’s people in your pocket. The contractor on the new kitchen too.”

  “Have you been drinking, Price?” Brendan asked derisively. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Look, Brendan. There’s no point in denying it. I’ve got proof. I’ve had an accountant check the figures and I’ve got a guy from Rheinhardt’s who admitted you’ve been running a scam.”

  The latter remark was a bluff, part of Tom’s plan to trap Brendan.

  “Yeah? Who?” Brendan challenged.

  “Joe Carabella,” said Hunt, using the name of one of Rheinhardt’s’ employees. “He says you’ve been ripping the club off since you got here.”

  Silence. Then a sneeze. It wasn’t Hunt who sneezed. I’d know his sneeze anywhere. Besides, he’d hardly ever sneezed since the doctor had switched his allergy medication.

  No, it was Brendan who sneezed. Once. Twice. “Damn hay fever,” he cursed. “Now look, what is it you want, Price?” he said. “You want to get me canned? Is that it? Because if you do, you’re going to have to deal with Duncan—”

  “You mean your father?” said Hunt. “Is Duncan in on this little scam of yours?”

  “Just tell me what you want, huh?”

  “I want a piece of the action,” said Hunt, talking tough, like an actor in a gangster movie. “You cut me in and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Silence.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Hunt asked.

  “I’m surprised, that’s all,” said Brendan. “You didn’t seem the type.”

  “The type to steal from the club, the way you have?” said Hunt, who was doing just what he’d been told to do: goad Brendan into a confession.

  “I thought you were one of those holier-than-thou types,” said Brendan. I could practically feel his smirk.

  “I’m not a holier-than-thou type. I’m a commodities trader, and my trades haven’t gone well lately. Not well at all,” Hunt explained. “The truth is, I’m in a deep hole. My firm’s about to dump me. I’m behind on my mortgage and I haven’t paid my bills here at The Oaks. Plus, my wife’s out of a job.”

  “Your wife’s a piece of ass, you know that, Price?” said Brendan.

  Tom and I looked at each other. Then he mouthed the words, “He’s right,” and smiled. I tried to smile back, but I couldn’t. Not until Brendan Hardy was behind bars.

  “Listen, Brendan. I’ve made you an offer,” said Hunt, doing a remarkable job of maintaining his cool. “You give me a piece of the action, I won’t tell the police what you’ve been up to. I imagine that, with your criminal record, the cops won’t look kindly on you.”

  “How did you know I had a record?” asked Brendan.

  “Your friend at Rheinhardt’s told me,” said Hunt. “He told me a lot of things.”

  “Bullshit,” said Brendan. “Bullshit, he did.”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you feel about it,” said Hunt, “I guess I’ll have to tell everybody what I know, starting with Evan Sutcliffe, the treasurer of The Oaks. I suppose he’ll discuss the situation with your father and they’ll go to the police together.”

  “My father,” Brendan snorted, then sneezed again.

  “Look, are you going to take my deal or aren’t you?” said Hunt.

  Silence. We were close. Very close. Any minute Brendan would admit—on tape and for the record—that he had been stealing from the club. And then Tom would throw him in jail and make him confess to killing Claire.

  “Well? What’ll it be?” Hunt asked.

  More silence. I shifted in my seat. The wait was excruciating.

  “Okay. I’ll cut you in,” said Brendan.

  I looked at Tom and gave him the thumbs-up sign. It was over! Hunt had pulled it off! We had caught Brendan!

  My mind raced as I imagined how much better the food at The Oaks would be once we got a new chef.

  “I thought you’d see it my way,” Hunt said. “Now, I think you’d better tell me how the scam works. Who’s in on it, how the money comes back, that kind of thing.”

  “You don’t need to know any of that,” Brendan snapped.

  “Sure, I do. I want to know who at this club is in on the scam besides me. So why don’t you just tell me about you and Duncan and all the—”

  “You’ll get your money. That’s all you need to know,” Brendan said again, then sneezed.

  I heard movement, then a very loud noise.

  “Shit,” said Tom as he removed his headphones and motioned for me to remove mine. “I think he went for a tissue and dislodged the antenna.”

  “Then we have to go in there,” I said. “We can’t let Hunt stay in there without monitoring their conversation.”

  “Shhh. Wait.” Tom put his headphones back on. “It’s okay.”

  I put mine back on and listened.

  “You sure you’re not going to tell me who else is involved?” Hunt was asking Brendan.

  “Why so curious?” Brendan asked before sneezing yet again.

  He must have reached for another tissue and come to the end of the box because there was static in my headphones, then silence, then a voice.

  “Hey, what the fuck is this?”

  It was Brendan. Had he spotted the antenna? Was our cover blown? Was Hunt in danger?

  “How should I know what it is?” said Hunt. “Looks like somebody was playing a little trick on us.”

  I grabbed Tom’s arm.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Now!”

  He took off his headphones, radioed for a patrol car, and bolted out of the car.

  “Stay here,” he ordered.

  “Not a chance,” I said and ran out of the car after him—or tried to. He was a much faster runner than I was and in much better shape. I vowed to sign up for an aerobics class as soon as this mess was over.

  I had lost sight of Tom as I huffed and puffed and chugged breathlessly toward the bookkeeping office, and when I heard the shot, I froze.

  “My God! Not Hunt!” I yelled and pushed myself forward. By the time I reached the office, things had quieted down considerably. Hunt was helping Tom handcuff Brendan. Tom was reading Brendan his Miranda rights. And the bullet that had been fired from Tom’s gun was lodged in the office ceiling. Apparently Brendan had tried to flee, and Tom had fired the shot to get his attention.

  “Oh, thank goodness. You’re safe,” I cried, flinging myself into Hunt’s arms.

  “Sure, I’m safe,” said Hunt, as if his brush with death were merely another night in the life of a commodities broker. “We’ll all be safe now that this pond scum is out of circulation.” He glared at Brendan, who glared back.

  Then, suddenly, there were sirens.

  “Sounds like my backup has arrived,” Tom said.

  Seconds later, three uniformed police officers charged into the bookkeeping office. Tom gave them a few facts about the case and told them to take Brendan away. After they had gone, he turned to Hunt and me and said, “I’ll take it from here, you two. Time for you to go home.”

  “With pleasure,” I said, exhausted from worrying about Hunt—and from all that running.

  “What happens next?” asked Hunt.

  “We’ll question Brendan—as much as his lawyer will allow us to,” Tom replied. “I’m sure his father will get him some hotshot from New York. But that’s not my problem. My problem is to gather as much evidence as I can and turn the case over to the prosecutor. We’ve
got a lot more on Mr. Hardy than we did before. We’ve got him confessing to the scam at the club. And if we can find evidence that Claire Cox knew about the scam, we’ve got a motive for his killing her.”

  “You mean we still don’t have enough evidence against him?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “We’ve got to prove that Ms. Cox knew what Brendan Hardy was up to.”

  “How?” I said. “The woman’s dead.”

  Tom shrugged.

  “Let’s go home,” said Hunt, who looked tired but triumphant. I had the feeling he was experiencing the type of high that people who survive a difficult ordeal experience. Sort of like the way I always felt after getting through a weekend with Kimberley.

  “I’m very proud of you,” I said as we walked to the parking lot. “Were you scared?”

  Hunt shook his head. “Not at all,” he said.

  “Not even when Brendan found the antenna?” I said.

  “Not even then,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him, of course, but that’s one of the things you do for the man you love: you let him believe that you believe him. You let him believe that you think he’s big and strong and fearless, and that when push comes to shove, you’d take him over Arnold Schwarzenegger any old day.

  Brendan’s arrest sent shock waves throughout the membership of The Oaks, and even though none of the members was present when the arrest was made, word about how and when it happened got around—including the fact that Hunt and I had been working with the police on the Claire Cox murder investigation. As a result, we were instant celebrities at the club, but not in the way you might think. No, despite the fact that we’d been the ones who’d risked our lives to stop Brendan from stealing money from the club, the members of The Oaks not only didn’t applaud when we walked by, they booed and hissed! One of the old dowagers even gave us the Bronx cheer! It was bizarre. People actually seemed angry at us. As if we were traitors. As if we had deliberately tried to bring disgrace and ignominy down on The Oaks’s hallowed reputation.

  Truthfully, the shunning didn’t bother me all that much, but I felt bad for Hunt, who genuinely liked some of the members and enjoyed their company. Oh, Perry and Ducky were still his friends and told him they thought it had been very courageous, even noble, of him to put himself in jeopardy for the good of the club. But the rest of those slugs he played golf with acted as if he were the criminal, not Brendan.

  “It’s unbelievable,” I said when I told Arlene the whole story. “Just when I think the people at The Oaks can’t get any more loathsome, they do.”

  “At least you got this Brendan guy arrested,” she said. “I think you and Hunt deserve a medal.”

  “Thanks for your support,” I laughed. “How can I ever repay you?”

  “Are you serious?” asked Arlene.

  “About what?” I said.

  “About repaying me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, I was wondering, are you still planning to go down to Florida for your dad’s birthday?”

  “Don’t tell me you want to come too?”

  “Come too?”

  “Yeah, Kimberley’s coming with us. I couldn’t not let her come.”

  We had gotten an extra plane ticket for Kimberley the morning after Brendan’s arrest, figuring that Tom wouldn’t need our services any longer. Unfortunately, it turned out that Tom had been right: Brendan’s lawyer was a big shot New York attorney named Patrick Delaney, who was known in legal circles as “Teeth,” not because his were remarkable, but because he apparently sank them into each case with a vengeance. Mr. Delaney went to the judge and claimed that his client had been the victim of entrapment on the part of the Belford Police. The judge refused to dismiss the case, but he did allow Brendan to put up bail money, despite the fact that his run-in with the law was not his first. So now the guy was running around loose again, while he awaited trial. And we were going to Florida—regardless.

  “No, I wasn’t angling for an invitation to Florida,” said Arlene. “It’s too hot there in the summer. I was hoping I could stay at your house while you’re gone. You know, sort of house-sit the place?”

  “Of course you can,” I said. “I should have thought of it before. A few days in the country will be a nice break for you. Were you thinking of coming alone?”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Ever since I broke up with Randy, I haven’t felt like going out much. I thought maybe a weekend in Connecticut would revive me a little.”

  “Absolutely. Use the house, the car, whatever.”

  “You’re a good friend, Judy,” said Arlene. “I really wish I could help you get a job.”

  “I know,” I said. “Maybe things will open up for me in the fall.”

  “I hope so.”

  I hung up with Arlene and called Tom to tell him we were going to Florida and to give him the number at my parents’ house in case anything exciting happened while we were gone.

  “I was just going to call you,” he said.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Two things. Good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  “The bad news. Then I’ll have something to look forward to.”

  “Okay. The bad news is that my boss is making me pull our guard off your house. He says it costs the department a fortune to have the place watched twenty-four hours a day, and that, since we’ve arrested our chief suspect, you’re no longer in any danger. Besides, we really can’t spare the manpower. We’re shorthanded as it is.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Brendan may be out on bail, but I can’t believe he’d be stupid enough to try anything now. Besides, we’ll be gone soon. We’re going down to Boca Raton for a week for my father’s seventy-fifth birthday. I know you and I have a deal, but now that Brendan’s been arrested, I didn’t think you’d mind if I left town for a few days.”

  “Of course, I mind,” said Tom. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Thanks, same here.” Poor Tom, I thought. He must be so lonely since his wife died. “Tell you what,” I went on. “When we get back from Florida, the three of us will have dinner. I’ll cook one of my extravagant gourmet feasts, okay?”

  “It’s a date. My stomach and I can hardly wait.”

  “Great. Now, tell me the good-news part of this phone call.”

  “Right. Guess who I’m meeting with this afternoon?”

  “Your father,” I said. “You two are going to mend your fences and then you’re going to tell him how wonderful I am and what a smart move it would be for him to hire me back at Charlton House.”

  “No, sorry. Dad and I are still on the outs.”

  “Figures. Then who are you seeing this afternoon?”

  “Delia Tewksbury.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Honest. She called and asked if I could come to her house.”

  “Interesting, considering how uncooperative her husband’s been in your investigation. It was Duncan who got that slick lawyer for Brendan, wasn’t it?”

  “Not according to Delaney. He says Brendan hired him.”

  “Oh, come on. Brendan’s not exactly plugged into big-time celebrity lawyers. Somebody must have called Patrick Delaney for him. And I’m betting that somebody was Duncan Tewksbury.”

  “I don’t know,” said Tom. “Hopefully, Mrs. Tewksbury can shed some light on all this.”

  “Call me after your meeting with her and tell me everything,” I said.

  “Absolutely.”

  About three hours later, Tom showed up, bringing us a complete play-by-play of his meeting with Mrs. Tewksbury.

  “I still can’t figure out what made her want to see you,” I said as the three of us sat in the living room.

  “Panic, that’s what made her want to see me,” Tom replied. “She wanted to make sure she gave me her version of things before Brendan gave me his. This is a lady who’s very big on controlling what people think of her. She’s terrified of losing her stature i
n the community and, of course, in that club.”

  “Well, what did she say?” I said, barely able to contain myself. The thought of Delia Tewksbury losing her stature in the community pleased me deeply. “Did she admit that Duncan is Brendan’s father?”

  “Yes,” said Tom.

  “Finally. Did she tell you who the mother is?”

  “Yes again,” said Tom.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” I said. “Who is Lorraine Pennock? Wasn’t that the name on the birth certificate?”

  Tom nodded. “Pennock is Delia Tewksbury’s maiden name,” he said.

  “Delia? Are you saying that she’s Brendan’s mother?”

  “You got it.”

  My mouth flew open. So did Hunt’s.

  “Her full name is Delia Lorraine Pennock Tewksbury,” Tom explained.

  “Wait, let me get this straight,” I said. “Delia and Duncan Tewksbury are Brendan’s parents, but they never told anybody?”

  “Apparently,” said Tom.

  “Then what was all that business about her being barren?” I asked.

  “A cover, I guess,” said Tom. “She didn’t want anyone to know that she and her husband gave Brendan up for adoption right after he was born.”

  “Why did they do that?” Hunt asked.

  “They weren’t married when Delia got pregnant,” said Tom. “They’d had a brief romance, then Duncan, an Army man, went off to the War. Meanwhile, Delia, who came from a prominent New England family that was humiliated by her unfortunate pregnancy, was shuttled off to some hospital in the Midwest, where she had the baby and then gave it up. When Duncan came back from Europe, he and Delia were married, and they never mentioned their son again. Brendan was simply their Little Mistake.”

  I shook my head. “Brother, you never know what goes on in families,” I said. “The Tewksburys always seemed so proper, so…so…‘holier than thou,’ to quote Brendan.”

  “And I’m only just getting started,” said Tom. “It turns out that Brendan grew up in Ohio and bounced from one place to another, getting himself in and out of trouble. About ten years ago, he showed up on the Tewksburys’ doorstep and announced that he was their long-lost son. They were mortified. What if all their fancy friends found out that they’d had an illegitimate son—and given the boy away? They told Brendan it would be best if he went back to wherever he came from, which, at the time, was prison, but he was not about to go quietly. First, he told the Tewksburys he needed money, which they gave him. Then, he told them he needed a job, which they helped him get at the Belford Athletic Club. Then, he told them he wanted to work at their club, so they got him the job at The Oaks. They kept going along with his demands because he threatened to tell everybody he was their son if they didn’t.”