Familiar Friend

by Cristina Sumners

  CHAPTER 12

  How much of that were you actually able to follow?” Tracy shouted into Kathryn’s ear.

  “Slightly less than half, I’d say,” Kathryn yelled back.

  The shouting was necessary, as the MacDonalds’ living room was crammed full of three times as many people as it was designed to hold comfortably and they were all talking at the top of their lungs.

  It was Wednesday night, a week after the murder of Mason Blaine.

  The Great Man, Chacón, had delivered the lecture of which Kathryn had understood less than half, and was now holding court at the party being given in his honor. Upon entering the room he had looked about, spotted the largest chair, and made a stately beeline for it. He had thrown off his great black cloak, settled into the chair, crossed his legs, interlaced his fingers, and proceeded to interrogate Professor MacDonald as to the state of the MacDonalds’ collection of brandy. Chacón’s face left few people in doubt as to what he thought of Professor MacDonald’s answers, but he condescended to accept a glass of something that was offered him, and a nonstop supply of glasses after that. A sycophantic crowd of students gathered around his chair, most of them sitting on the floor; a few asked questions, but most had the sense to realize that their role there was to worship, so they silently obliged while Chacón pontificated in his powerful voice.

  Over in their corner Tracy was yelling back at Kathryn, “You’re lucky. At least you speak some Spanish. Jamie insisted I come to the damn lecture even though I don’t speak a word of it.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Because I’ll never have another chance to hear a Nobel Laureate speak, quote unquote.”

  “What an idiot! Sorry, he’s your husband, but really! What good does it do you if you can’t understand a word the guy is saying? Besides, Desmond Tutu comes to New York on a fairly regular basis, and he’s a Nobel Laureate. You could always go hear him.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t think of that, and besides, Jamie doesn’t always respond well to reason.”

  “I have noticed that.”

  Kathryn’s irony was not lost on her friend, but Tracy decided not to rise to the bait, instead taking another sip of her drink and letting her eyes wander over the crowd.

  Kathryn, mindful of her reason for being at the party, asked, “What do you think? Surely they’re a bit edgier than usual?”

  “Christ, Kathryn! What do you expect? Of course they’re edgy! Look how much they’re drinking! Normally with somebody like Chacón around they’d be on their best behavior, and this would be like a tea party. Speaking of drinking.” Tracy rattled the ice in her empty glass.

  Kathryn wasn’t quite ready for a refill, but she agreed to accompany Tracy to the dining room, where the MacDonalds had set up the bar. As they threaded their way through the mob in that direction, they heard roars of laughter emanating from the room. Left to Tracy, they might never have gotten close enough to see the source of this amusement, but Kathryn could be pretty aggressive when she was curious, and she ’scuse-me’d through the crowd around the dining table, dragging Tracy in her wake, until they had a good view.

  It was Patrick Cunningham, and he was mixing a drink. It was quite a performance.

  “Now you see, boys and girls, the fact is that this is a bottle of vodka—this is a bottle of vodka. You see that, don’t you? You see that? And this item here, yes, here we are, this one here, this is a glass, I’m sure you comprehend that—comprenden ustedes, as we say! And the fact of the matter, the true crux of the situation, is that this glass, this item here, does indeed contain none of the liquid that inhabits this bottle; that is, the quantity it contains is zero, because, as you see, the glass is empty!” At this, Patrick put down both bottle and glass, shoved both hands in his pockets, rocked back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels, shook his head violently back and forth so that his frizzy hair flew in all directions, and cleared his throat with a great hacking noise. The laughter of his audience reached a deafening roar. He picked up the bottle and glass again. “Now if we were to, so to speak, introduce some of the liquid into the bottle, as it were—”

  Everyone in the dining room continued hooting, clapping, and egging him on.

  Kathryn turned to Tracy and asked, “What on earth—?”

  Tracy replied, “Professor Witherspoon, better known as ‘The Spoon.’ I’ve met him at department parties, and if you think Patrick’s imitation is wildly exaggerated, that’s because you’ve never met Witherspoon. If anything, it’s underplayed.”

  Patrick finished off his Witherspooned vodka and tonic—it took a good three minutes—to a round of tumultuous applause; Tracy and Kathryn refilled their own drinks and joined him.

  “I didn’t know you were so talented,” Kathryn remarked as they strolled out of the French doors onto the enormous back porch, glassed in during the winter, and spanning the distance from the dining room to the living room.

  “Ah,” said Patrick with a puckish smile, and draping an arm around her, “there are so many things you don’t know about me.” He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “But stick around. You have years to find out.”

  At the other end of the porch this little scene was witnessed by the Drews and José Espronceda y Montalbán. Edward grinned appreciatively and exclaimed, “¡Ay, bien! ¡El monjo tiene novia!”

  “Parece que si,” José replied; then, seeing the long-suffering look on Caroline’s face, added hastily, “Oh! I am sorry! He said, Look, the monk has a girlfriend, and I said, It seems to be true.”

  “Really, Caroline,” her husband remarked, “I’d think you’d learn Spanish in self-defense.”

  “I don’t want to learn Spanish. What I do want to learn is what’s with Patrick and Kathryn?”

  “I’m not sure. I do know that the Newmans have been trying forever to matchmake between Patrick and Kathryn but that nothing’s ever come of it.”

  “Well, that was a pretty specific bit of flirtation there,” Caroline pronounced. “Still, she’s a bit old for him, isn’t she?”

  “I think it is a good thing,” declared José, “if Patrick goes with Kathryn. He is too much alone. Never, never, does he have a date in all the time I am here. That is not good for a man!”

  “What’s not good for a man?”

  The three of them turned. Valerie Powers had emerged from the living room onto the porch. The Drews regarded her coolly, but José, ever the gentleman, answered her politely. “We are saying, or at least I am saying, that it is not good for a man to be for a long time without the company of a woman.”

  “Well,” Valerie murmured in her silky voice, “I’d have to say yea to that.”

  Valerie had been trying to make an impression on José ever since she had first clapped eyes on him and she had failed singularly to do so. This puzzled her greatly, since she knew herself to be much more beautiful than any of the girls that José had dated during that time. She would long ago have written him off as hopeless were it not for the fact that Valerie was constitutionally incapable of writing off a man who looked like José and was attached to so much money. So she was still giving it the old college try, and José, poor man, was far too polite to tell her to take a hike. The next ten minutes, therefore, were spent with Valerie trying to get José to ask her out, Edward feeling sorry for José and desperately trying to divert Valerie, and Caroline finding the whole thing wickedly entertaining and giving her husband no help at all.

  This game was interrupted by the arrival of the so-called monk and his supposed girlfriend, together with Tracy Newman, who had by now drifted to their end of the porch. Greetings were exchanged all around, Patrick introducing Kathryn to the Drews.

  “Well, Kathryn, what did you think of our Nobel lecturer?” Edward asked politely.

  “The hell with that,” his wife interrupted. “Ask her what she thinks about our murder.”

  “Caro!” Edward admonished.

  “Oh come on, Edward. Kathryn’s a friend of that
cop. When he came into the Student Center she personally introduced him to all the graduate students, remember? They told us. So do you really think she’s here for literary reasons?”

  Edward, horrendously embarrassed, tried to stammer apologies for his wife, but Kathryn would have none of it.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I think that’s very clever. Tell me, Caroline, what do you think of the murder?”

  Tracy stood on tiptoe to whisper in Patrick’s ear, “Kathryn ten, Caroline five.”

  Patrick bit back a smile.

  Caroline looked sourly at Kathryn. “I think it’s up to the police to solve it and the rest of us”—here she tossed off the last inch of her drink—“should keep our traps shut. I’m going back for a refill.” And suiting the action to the words, she stalked off in the direction of the dining room. Edward made his excuses and hurried after her.

  Valerie looked at Kathryn, whom she had met previously at the Newmans’. “Is it true? Are you here to spy on us?”

  Shit, thought Kathryn. So much for undercover. “Sure,” she replied casually. “I always go to the most hard-to-get-into parties in Harton in the entire calendar year just so I can spy for the cops. It’s my hobby. Pardon me, I need to go tape a conversation in the living room.” And summoning a seraphic smile, she fluttered her fingers at the group of them and departed feeling rather foolish.

  In the living room the Great Man was still holding court. Professor MacDonald fetched him drinks; Mrs. MacDonald kept his plate restocked from the buffet. Around his rock-like presence the party ebbed and flowed. Kathryn searched the teeming horde and found a familiar face. Weaving through the bodies, she managed to reach him without stepping on too many toes or spilling her scotch.

  “Stephen!”

  “Kathryn! Lovely, dear, Kathryn!” He kissed her on both cheeks. “What an unexpected pleasure! How do you come to be at the MacDonalds’?”

  Meaning, thought Kathryn, how the hell did I wangle an invitation?

  “Patrick invited me!” she answered guilelessly. “Wasn’t that lovely of him? And is this your date?” she asked, knowing damn well it wasn’t.

  The girl in question was small and cute and had flaming red hair and freckles.

  “Oh, no,” Stephen drawled, “ah have not the honor of calling Miss Hancock mah date, but ah hope she is mah friend. May ah introduced Jenny Hancock, the Reverend Kathryn Koerney!”

  Jenny was, of course, one of Kathryn’s targets, having been Mason Blaine’s last flirt—if flirt was all she was. Kathryn extended a cordial hand, wondering if little Jenny was anywhere near as drunk as Stephen clearly was.

  “You’re a minister?” Jenny asked.

  “Yes,” Kathryn replied. “An Episcopal priest. I teach at the seminary.”

  “I think Christianity is a load of crap,” Jenny declared.

  Kathryn was used to this sort of thing at parties. People started tediously explaining to her why they no longer went to church the minute they discovered she was a priest; it was an occupational hazard of the clergy, suffered by all wearers of the cloth from Baptists to Catholics. The explanation was not usually expressed, however, with such shattering rudeness.

  As Stephen, card-carrying Southern Gentleman and Sunday Go-to-Meetin’ Roman Catholic, sputtered in shock, “Wha—what—?” Kathryn reflected that the question about how much Jenny had been drinking had probably been answered.

  She offered Jenny a glittering smile and remarked in a thoroughly unoffended voice, “There are some really crappy things about Christianity, aren’t there? To begin with, historically we have things like the Crusades and the Inquisition, but it’s not all historical is it? Today the Church is just chock full of so many hypocrites. Is that the sort of thing you meant?”

  Jenny gaped at her, her pretty mouth hanging open about an inch and a half. Kathryn could tell Stephen was about to laugh, so she stepped very hard on his toe. He got the point.

  Jenny finally shut her mouth and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

  “Well,” Kathryn replied cheerfully, “I couldn’t agree with you more. But let’s not talk about my work. Tell me about yours. Are you also in the Spanish Department?”

  Thus she dragged the conversation ruthlessly in the direction she wanted it to go, and since neither Stephen nor Jenny was a match for her, she soon had them talking about Mason Blaine, how everybody had felt about him when he was alive, how everybody was feeling now, and what everybody was saying about who they thought had killed him.

  Apparently the grad students’ favorite candidate was Charles Caldwell, because “everybody knew Ellen Caldwell was having an affair with Mason and Charles was wild with jealousy about it.”

  “I don’t know the Caldwells; are they here?”

  “Oh, yes,” Stephen replied. “That’s Ellen over there, talking to Henrietta MacDonald.” Kathryn turned to look.

  There could hardly have been two women more different. Mrs. MacDonald was short, gray-haired, and, it seemed to Kathryn, determinedly feminine according to the most old-fashioned standards. She was wearing a pale pink cocktail dress that would not have looked out of place in the 1950s; it had lace at the neck, ruffly sleeves, and an unfashionably full skirt. The extraordinary thing, though, was that this confection suited her right down to the ground, and Henrietta MacDonald looked not only very pretty but also quite appropriately dressed.

  Ellen Caldwell towered over her by a good ten inches, and was dressed in slouchy tailored linen that hung elegantly from her overly thin frame. She had chosen the muted neutrals of her clothes to show off the glory of her auburn hair. The hair, Kathryn noticed, hung straight to the shoulder in an unpretentious cut, but it was clear from the way her hair swung whenever the woman moved her head that she had paid a hell of a lot of money for that understated look. As for Ellen’s face, it wasn’t beautiful; it was better. It was strong, Kathryn decided, and full of intelligence.

  “Well,” she said. “I can see the appeal. For Blaine, I mean.”

  This statement was met with cries of disbelief and even derision. Neither Stephen nor Jenny would allow that Ellen was at all attractive, both maintaining that she was skinny as a rail and had a face like a horse and besides, she wasn’t that nice a person. Kathryn encouraged them to elaborate on this last observation, which they were only too happy to do, while Kathryn attempted to sift the wheat of useful information from the chaff of alcohol, nerves, and general spite. After another five minutes she decided she had elicited from them everything she was going to get, and it was time to move on. Graciously conceding that they obviously knew Ellen Caldwell far better than she did, and mendaciously saying that she needed to use the little girl’s room, she excused herself and went seeking new prey.

  After the debacle with Caroline Drew, she was feeling pretty good about her success with Stephen and Jenny. She had ascertained the state of the nerves of two of the players, i.e., pretty shattered. Stephen’s accent was never that broad except when he was absolutely blotto. And nobody had ever suggested that Jenny Hancock was a bitch, so presumably she was drunk, too. And they had heartily confirmed one of the suggestions Tom had wanted her to check out.

  Damn! she thought. I should have asked them to point out Charles Caldwell. But even as the idea crossed her mind, she wavered about it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to meet another killer.

  “Hello, gorgeous!”

  “Oh, hello, Jamie. You’re in an expansive mood.”

  “Well, how often do you get to hear one of the greatest minds of our generation?” He waved his glass at Chacón. “Tracy didn’t want to come, but I made her. Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the words, I said. To sit in the presence of greatness is enough. When are you going to get that kind of opportunity again?”

  “Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

  At this moment Patrick appeared and laid a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “A word in your ear, my friend.” He pulled him away so that Kathryn cou
ldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Kathryn decided she should try for a conversation with Carlos Barreda, and thought she saw him on the porch. With some difficulty she worked her way back through the crowd in the living room, but by the time she got to where she thought she had seen Carlos, he had disappeared. She did, however, find Tracy.

  “Hail, fair one! How goes the battle?” she asked.

  “Not well,” Tracy replied. “Getting to that stage, you know. Maybe one black Russian too many.”

  “Really? You look perfectly sober to me.”

  “Do I? Well, looks can be deceiving, she said with vast originality. Oh, look who’s coming. Our second-favorite blonde.”

  Kathryn looked around to see Crystal Montoya sweeping toward them.

  Crystal extended a slender arm to Tracy with a drink in her hand, saying, “I believe this is yours.”

  Tracy looked down at it and said, “Oh, yeah, I guess so.” She took it from Crystal, but she held the glass without drinking from it.

  “Hello, Crystal,” Kathryn said pleasantly. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  Crystal raised her eyebrows in an expression that asked so eloquently what the hell Kathryn was doing there that Kathryn was hard put not to laugh. Had it been anyone but Crystal, Kathryn would have explained how she had acquired her invitation to the party, but the Castilian was left to stew in her own curiosity while Kathryn smiled blandly and instead asked her what she thought of the lecture. Crystal’s Spanish was superior to Kathryn’s but Kathryn’s knowledge of Spanish literature was better than Crystal’s, and her intelligence was about twice hers, so that the battle was running about even a minute later when Jamie showed up.

  “Tracy,” he interrupted rudely, “you’ve had enough for tonight. Here, give me that. I’ll drink it.” And he took the drink from her unresisting hand and tossed off a healthy swig from it.

  Instantly he drew a rasping breath, dropped the glass, shattering it in pieces on the stone floor, arched his back, went stiff as the proverbial board, and fell among the shards of the glass.