“You could hardly blame him for that,” Gene said.
“Margery Macrae, that is absolute bunkum!” Mother said.
Meg laughed. “I’d never try to convince you of it, Grandmother, but it’s God’s honest truth.”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Mother said automatically, spearing lettuce with her fork.
Kirk, apparently unconcerned about Meg offending the lord said, “I’ve heard of animal psychics. Did he talk to you in words?”
Meg’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I don’t know how to explain it—not words—just ideas that I knew weren’t mine.”
I stared at her. Other than the greenish pallor of her hangover, she looked normal, but she thought she was talking to dogs.
Gene addressed me, “Did Andre talk much about his plans to run for the senate?”
Although I was pretty sure reference to my liaison with Andre fell into Mother’s unpleasant conversation category, I plunged in. “Oh, he and Barry used to joke a lot about running him for king because Andre had a solution for everything, but I was surprised when he filed,” I said, taking a sip of water. “I’d have expected him to wait for an easier race. It’s a pretty sure thing Louise Nordahl will win the primary for the Republicans.”
“It’s hard to see how a liberal like Sybil Aynesworth stands a chance,” Mother said.
Gene’s leg hit the table leg causing the dishes to jump. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Sybil may have a chance,” I said. “She’s got most of the Democratic vote and may nibble at some of Andre’s share of Republicans. Her family’s problems have earned her a lot of sympathy.”
“Surely you don’t think she’s using that tragedy to her advantage?” Kirk demanded.
I shrugged. “Have you ever heard of her turning away from a camera?”
Gene cleared his throat. “We’re getting off the subject. Do you know who Andre’s volunteers are?”
“No,” I said. “You should ask—” Fran. Another stab of pain. Fran would have known. “Even if you’re not running for the same position, don’t all you candidates keep an eye on each other’s campaigns?”
“No time.” Gene leaned back in his chair. “I can ask around, I just thought you might know.”
“You might try Victor,” Kirk said. “He mentioned he’d done some work on Andre’s campaign.”
“You see?” I exclaimed. “You should have listened to me yesterday.”
Gene’s eyes narrowed at me. He swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti, but before he could speak, Mother said, “Have some more salad,” thrusting the bowl into his hands. “And tell me how your own campaign is going.”
He shrugged irritably and took a deep breath. “I’m tired of it already. Making speeches and being on view is bullsh—” he skidded to a stop.
Mother appeared not to notice.
He continued, “I want to improve services, not smile for cameras.”
“Your parents would be disappointed if you dropped out.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know.” He rubbed at his moustache with his forefinger.
I nearly laughed at his rueful expression. Obviously his run for sheriff was someone else’s idea. I wasn’t surprised. Gene had never wanted to live anywhere but Warfield, never wanted more than a job that allowed him time to talk with folks or to go fishing on a nice day.
He looked down at his empty plate in surprise and said, “Can I have some more?”
“May I,” corrected Mother.
He sighed, scraped back his chair and went to the stove where he heaped his plate. “Anyone else?”
“Yes,” Meg said, getting up, plate in hand.
A flicker of movement caught my eye. I turned to see Kirk feeding Bunny a strand of spaghetti while he thought we were watching Gene and Meg. Bunny licked his chops.
Gene piled spaghetti on Meg’s plate and said, “Andre’s housekeeper said you’d been a frequent visitor at his place the last couple of weeks.”
My throat closed. I pushed my plate away.
But Meg answered calmly, “We were running lines.” She sat back at the table.
“He played the corpse,” Gene said. “You didn’t have any lines together.”
“No, but he helped me get into character and learn my role anyway. He was terrific at all the parts. The rest of you guys drove him crazy stumbling over your dialogue, not understanding your motivations.”
“For heaven’s sake, it was just a little melodrama, not King Lear!” I said.
“What are you upset about?” Gene asked. “You weren’t in it till the last night. He wouldn’t have been criticizing you. He was probably talking about Jared.”
“Oh, I wasn’t so great, either,” Kirk said. “Everyone expects a priest to be able to work in front of people, but I was having real butterflies!”
“About whom was he speaking, Meg?” Mother asked.
Meg squirmed. “He didn’t have a high opinion of anyone, really.”
Gene’s fork hit his plate. “What exactly did he say?”
“He was especially hard on Victor, laughed because Victor had been asking if he could give him an intro in Hollywood. Andre said Victor was right where he belonged, wrestling country bumpkins around a stage.”
“Gosh, I thought Victor was perfect,” I said. “He was menacing and kind of oily, just the way I’d pictured the role.”
“What else did Andre say?” Gene asked.
“Well, he said I had a lot of potential.” Meg smiled.
Kirk muttered, “Talk about oily,” under his breath and slipped another strand of spaghetti to Bunny. Mother looked away.
“He said Annamaria had improved a lot. She was so stilted and self-conscious at first, but once she finally got the character, she really lived into it.”
Gene nodded judiciously. “That’s true. What did he say about me?”
Meg’s face grew red.
“What?”
“He said it was lucky you only had to play yourself because your arrogance served you well.”
Gene frowned. “What does that mean?”
Mother, Meg, and I exchanged glances. Meg shrugged innocently, but all of us knew what Andre had meant. Another man might view it as simple arrogance, but it was something else besides, an unselfconscious, a sureness that made people turn to him.
Gene’s face reddened as the silence lengthened. “So who else did he not approve of?”
“He despaired of Alisz, said she was more wooden than an oak, said if she’d ever had an emotion in her life, no one would know it. He thought Jared joked around too much.”
“He tends to do that when he’s nervous,” I said.
Gene said, “And of course Andre called Laurel mousy to her face.”
Kirk said, “But remember how good she was when Andre made us do those crazy drama exercises?”
Meg said, “Laurel was great when she was pretending to be someone else.”
Smiling, Kirk said, “She pretended to be a Southern belle at her first cotillion. She was so funny.”
“Got the drawl just right,” Gene agreed.
“Annamaria mimicked that Australian lady who works for her,” Meg said. “I thought she was the best, but Victor and Alisz claimed their Transylvanian accents beat everyone.”
“Funny how pretending to be somebody else loosens you up,” Kirk said. “Doing different accents—”
I jerked upright. “How many of the cast did southern accents?”
Kirk shrugged. “We all tried it, didn’t we?”
“Can you imitate them now?”
Gene flicked a glance at me, blue eyes intent.
“Are you thinking about the caller?” Meg asked.
“Yes. There was an accent, but it didn’t sound real. Isn’t that what you thought, Mother?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t know how to describe it.”
Kirk tried a couple of times to duplicate the accents he’d heard the cast members use, but Mother and I couldn’t get anything out o
f it.
“Getting back to what we were talking about before, Meg, what did Andre say about Fran?” Gene asked.
Meg looked apologetic, “He thought Fran tried to keep the spotlight on herself.”
“That’s Fran for you,” Gene said cheerfully. A shadow passed over his face. “Jesus.” His hand ran over his moustache. “It’s hard to accept, isn’t it?”
I bit my upper lip and winced.
Meg’s face crumpled and a tear slid down her cheek, “I’m going to miss her so much.” Kirk patted her arm.
Mother said, “Fran was such a vital person.”
“So the only reason you were hanging around Andre’s was to get coaching for the play?” Gene asked.
Meg turned an anguished glance on Kirk.
Gently Kirk asked, “Do you want me to tell?”
Meg looked at Mother, then at me, her dark eyes pleading.
My voice trembled, “Meg, for heaven’s sake, tell us what’s wrong.”
Meg sat up straight. “I was talking to Andre about renting Barry’s apartment over the garage.”
My breath whooshed out. “Is that all?”
“All?” her voice squeaked with surprise. “I didn’t think you’d let me go.”
“Not let you go? Why ever not?”
She shrugged and looked around at us uncomfortably. “You know.”
“Know what?” I said in exasperation.
“Well, you never got to leave.”
“You’ve always been free to leave,” Mother said stiffly. “Both of you.”
“Honey, just because I didn’t leave doesn’t mean you can’t,” I said.
Meg’s eyes filled with tears.
“She didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Kirk said.
“You went to Kirk about this instead of coming to us?” Mother demanded.
“He—”
“I dragged it out of her.”
Mother and I glared at him.
Color flooded into his face, but he looked first at Mother, then at me, without a trace of expression. He’s really got that priest thing down pat, I thought. I remembered him asking after Meg yesterday, mentioning they had an appointment. Just what’s going on?
Mother pushed back from the table and stood, using the back of her chair for support. Kirk scrambled to his feet to help. She waved him away, reaching for the cane she’d left hooked on the refrigerator door.
“I’m going to rest.” She took a step, then turned to Gene, “I hadn’t thought to ask. Who’s going to notify Fran’s family? Should we do that?”
“I talked to her brother. He’ll tell his parents,” Gene said.
Mother said, “Liz, you should call them and offer to help make arrangements.” She walked down the hall, her cane thumping.
“I should have thought of calling Fran’s family already,” I said. “I’ll run upstairs and phone them.”
Meg stretched her hand out to me. “Aunt Liz, I’m sorry about the moving-out stuff. This is a bad time.”
I clasped her warm hand briefly. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We’re the ones— We’ll get it worked out, don’t worry.” I hastened down the hall, but Gene’s voice stopped me at the foot of the stairs.
“You didn’t know Meg was hanging around with Andre?”
I kept my voice low, glancing towards the shut doors of Mother’s room “Not till Sheila mentioned it yesterday.”
Gene’s beeper went off. “Damn. I’ve got to get it. This piece-of-crap cell phone the council stuck us with isn’t working again. Can I use … ”
Irresistible. “May I use?”
“Someday, Liz,” he growled, shaking his head, a reluctant smile on his lips.
“In the kitchen,” I said. “Use Mother’s line, will you, so I can reach Fran’s family on mine?” I looked at my watch as I went upstairs. Where would Fran’s family be at 12:30 on a Saturday? Under usual circumstances, a golf course.
I walked into my study and crossed my great-grandfather’s worn Persian carpet to my desk. I took my phone book out of the top left-hand drawer, started to open it and stopped.
Stepping to the love seat in the corner by the bookshelves, I kicked off my shoes and sat with my feet up, my back against the arm’s faded rose velvet upholstery. I reached to the sound system on the shelf behind me and flipped on the CD player. The lilting sounds of Rampal playing Vivaldi filled the room.
I got up and crossed to the desk and slowly picked up the phone. I put it down again. I stared out the window at the police cruiser Gene had left parked at the curb.
The truth was, I hadn’t much cared for Fran’s family.
Her father and brother were both doctors and quite stuck up about it. Her mother was a physician’s wife and took it seriously, even though he was a proctologist.
I sighed. Thinking about doctors made me think of Hugh Cameron. How little Mother understood! I’d loved him so much, for so many reasons, and one reason had been that Hugh had enjoyed his patients on a human level. He never had that nose-in-the-air attitude. He was like Gene that way. He loved this little town and settled in for life. Not much satisfaction to Alisz who’d thought that in marrying a doctor, she’d move on to bigger and better places.
I realized I was leaning over the desk, picking brown leaves off the grape ivy that hung in the corner formed by the windows. “Oh, God, Fran, what am I going to say to your family?”
I sank into the desk chair and dropped the browned leaves into the brass wastebasket. I noticed dust on the desk. I always cleaned the study on Friday morning. My routine had been broken with a vengeance yesterday.
I trailed a finger over the smooth Koa wood. The day I’d signed the contract for my first five-figure advance, Fran and I had gone down to The Real Mother Goose and bought this desk made by Anthony Kahn.
Restlessly, I swiveled my chair from side to side. The desk’s file drawer was ajar, the edge of a manila envelope sticking out. I smiled, remembering Fran standing here yesterday morning intent on theft. I opened the drawer to push the envelope all the way in. As I moved it, I realized there was something in it. I plucked it out of the drawer and dumped the contents.
Color photographs rubber banded together plopped onto the desk. The top one showed a couple kissing passionately, their bodies molded together. Uncomfortable, I nevertheless continued to look at the picture, the man’s broad shoulders, the long, lean line of his back.
I knew those shoulders, that back, that red hair.
“Men are dogs,” I said, and stuffed the packet of photos back into the envelope. I threw it in the trash. The last thing on earth I cared about seeing was pictures of Gene kissing some woman.
I was turning away when it hit me. I whispered, “My God, Fran, what were you doing with these?” and turned back.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I pulled the rubber band off the packet and looked at the picture underneath. Pretty much the same shot. So was the next. Somebody’d been clicking off shots rapidly, but by the fourth one the couple was pulling apart. The woman looking up at Gene was Sibyl Aynesworth, director of the library system and one of Andre’s rivals for the Senate.
Not Sybil! How could he?
Her mouth was slightly open, her large brown eyes locked on Gene’s. I couldn’t tell if she was dazed, pleased, outraged. She looked as if she were about to say something.
I turned the photo over and looked at the next. Smiling, definitely pleased.
I felt heat rise up my neck and into my face. “And you such a family-values kinda gal.”
Sibyl’s story literally made people weep. She’d had two little boys, both afflicted with a rare neurological disorder that doomed them to death in their early teens. No sooner had the diagnosis been delivered than Sibyl’s husband crashed his car into a freeway divider and was tied to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. This had happened back in Iowa or Kansas or Nebraska somewhere. Sibyl and her husband had moved to the northwest after the death of the second child.
How the idea
of running for the senate developed, I wasn’t sure, but I did know that her untarnished image as a wife and mother were crucial to her success in this conservative part of the northwest.
These pictures were dynamite!
I studied them closely. Behind Gene pink roses bloomed. I recognized the shirt Gene was wearing, a hokey cowboy shirt with turquoise piping along the yoke. It had been new at the big family picnic last June.
The next photo showed Sybil reaching for Gene, and the rest showed her leading him away, through a Chinese-red gate overshadowed by a tall hedge. I riffled through the pictures again, this time noticing the small envelope of negatives.
Someone had shot frame after frame of an incident that had taken only a few moments. It must have been someone in hiding. Not Fran—she was hopeless with a camera.
“How did you get these and where were you going to send them?” I whispered. I couldn’t tell if I was more shocked by the fact Fran had had these photos or that Gene was in them. I huffed out a breath. Anybody who knew Gene would realize he’s warming up for wife #4. I slapped them down on the desk.
There was a heavy feeling in my heart. Fran had hidden these, she’d been searching for an envelope so she could mail them, and in our conservative area, they were an excellent tool for blackmail. Oh, God, not Fran. I swept the photographs aside and crossed my arms on the desk, resting my hot forehead on them.
I stared at the wood grain close to my eyes. I tried to lose myself in Rampal’s soaring rendition of Mozart. I tried to convince myself that Fran had the photos for some innocent reason. It just wouldn’t wash. Why had Fran left them here? Because I wouldn’t let her take the envelope, and I was watching so she couldn’t take the photos out.
I remembered Mother saying Fran had come while I was in the police station. Why hadn’t Fran taken them then? Because Mother told her she couldn’t go upstairs. It was only a joke, but apparently made her afraid Mother would look at her too closely when she came back down.
Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly Page 15
