Mortal Friends

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “It’s been my experience that what they do to one, they do to another,” I said.

  I think Violet liked having me around, and I have to say it was rather wonderful to get up every morning and have someone to bitch about life with. Gunner knew I was living at Violet’s house, and one day he called and asked if he could come over and talk to me.

  “I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that house,” he said.

  “I thought you wanted to keep our relationship a secret,” I said.

  “From the Park Police. But you can tell your pal Violet—on the way-off chance you haven’t already.” No fool, Gunner.

  “I haven’t,” I protested weakly. He just let it drop.

  Violet was thrilled she was going to get to meet the intriguing detective at last. I knew she’d always been a little envious of my relationship with Gunner. Though he’d already guessed I’d told her about him, I told her to play dumb when she met him.

  “For God’s sakes, don’t let on how much you know,” I instructed her.

  It was one thing for Gunner to suspect I’d told Violet everything, and another for her to confirm it.

  “Fine. And how much does he know about me?” she asked.

  She gathered from my hesitation that I’d told him everything. I half expected her to throw a fit. But she just laughed.

  That afternoon, Gunner came over to Violet’s house, and I introduced them for the first time. They shook hands. Violet flashed him one of her queen-at-teatime smiles and said, “How do you do? So nice to meet you, Detective. Oh, love your diamond stud!” She pointed to his ear, as if it were an unexpected touch. I could tell she wasn’t fooling him, but Gunner was polite. He didn’t let on. He complimented her on her house, the décor of which was what I call “Old World Weary.” Rainy Bolton was the original decorator, and the whole place reflected her joyless, juiceless touch. Violet had hardly changed a stick of furniture in the fifteen years since she and Grant had been married, for fear of offending her formidable mother-in-law. It was Rainy’s view that serious people didn’t care all that much about clothes or decoration.

  When Gunner admired the drab but important American eighteenth-century highboy in the hall and asked if she’d gotten it from my shop, Violet replied haughtily, “No, no, that’s a family heirloom.”

  She meant Grant’s family, of course, because from what she’d told me, her own family was pretty short on heirlooms, if you don’t count lava lamps and avocado green kitchen appliances. She sounded slightly pretentious, which surprised me because she’d always feigned a certain disregard for the shabby grandeur surrounding her. But now that Grant had left her, she clung much more to the physical property of their marriage as evidence of her connection to the Bolton clan.

  Gunner wanted to talk to me in private. Violet led us to the library, where we could be alone. Unfortunately, this was the room where the portrait of Grant’s maternal grandfather, Colonel Compton, hung above the mantelpiece like a big black cloud. The colonel’s eyes followed you around the room no matter where you stood, making you feel guilty about something.

  The Ancient Maureener brought us tea and biscuits on a silver tray. I sat on the old leather couch. Gunner sat catty-corner to me on the fraying needlepoint wing chair. I poured us both a cup of tea.

  “Any more news about Amber?” I asked him.

  Gunner shook his head. “Listen, Reven, I need you to do something for me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “It involves answering some difficult questions.”

  “What kinds of questions?”

  “Questions about you and Mr. Poll.”

  “Go ahead. Fire away.”

  Gunner shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “How was the sex between you two?”

  “I never kiss and tell, Gunner…” I paused, just to tease him a bit. “But if you must know, it was okay. Maybe the earth didn’t move, but it trembled occasionally,” I said coyly.

  “Was he into bondage or anything unusual? Any kind of rough stuff?”

  “The answer is no. And I know why you’re asking.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know from Violet—our in-house serial killer buff—that when you guys have a suspect, you always want to know what kind of sex they’re into. You want to find out if it’s anything kinky that might be reflected in the crimes. Right?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Violet told me that when the police interviewed Ted Bundy’s live-in girlfriend, she revealed that Ted sometimes liked to tie her up and pretend to strangle her…. But that she didn’t think anything of it at the time. Oy.”

  “So Mr. Poll never did anything that made you…uncomfortable?”

  “Not really. It was missionary madness all the way.” Gunner looked thoughtful. “What? You’re thinking something. What is it?” I asked him.

  “Well, I maybe just figured out why he likes to go to strip clubs.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say that your Preacher Poll is a little more adventuresome with other types of ladies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He likes it rough with strippers. He’s been known to rope and brand.”

  “Not literally?”

  “Oh, he’s a regular cowboy, our boy Bob is. But he’s discriminating. He only picks gals who won’t talk.”

  “Well, one of them obviously talked to you.”

  “Yeah…. I guess I’m just a persuasive kinda guy.”

  As I was thinking back on the sex I’d had with Bob, Gunner said, “So you never felt like you were in any danger.”

  I shook my head in grim amusement. “No. In fact, I felt safe with him—idiot that I am.” Then I suddenly remembered something Bob had said. “But wait! I remember I did once ask him what thrilled him, and he said, ‘Danger.’ I remember that now.”

  Gunner cocked his head to one side. “He say what kind of danger?”

  “I asked him that, actually. And he said something like anything that caused his gut to contract. But I have to be honest with you. I never felt threatened by him.”

  Gunner crossed his arms in front of him. “Try a little experiment with me?”

  “What now?”

  “Lie down on the couch, close your eyes, and say whatever comes into your head about Mr. Poll.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You really ought to be a shrink, you know that?”

  I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes, like he said. I started venting about Bob and how he’d humiliated me. This didn’t seem to be getting us anywhere, so Gunner suggested I be more specific.

  “Forget how you feel about him now, and describe a typical date you had with him—from beginning to end. Where you went, what you talked about, who you saw, what you wore, what he wore, what you ate, drank, where you ended up. Say whatever comes into your head, no matter how dumb or insignificant it seems.”

  I’d had some experience with free association on an analyst’s couch. I rambled on about the time Bob took me to the Folger. I chose that night because we’d had such a great evening, and I wanted to show Gunner that I wasn’t a complete and total masochist. The man really had made an effort to sweep me off my feet. I didn’t just imagine the whole damn thing.

  I described how Maxwell came to pick me up at my house, as usual, and how we drove downtown to pick up Bob at his office, as usual. I told him about the whole evening—the program of writers at the theater, who was there, what the dinner was like, who we both sat next to, what I was wearing, the man who talked about bookbinding, how Bob held my hand as we strolled through the library, Cynthia’s million-dollar pledge, the fact that I’d been worried about him sitting next to Cynthia, and how relieved I was that he didn’t seem to like her. In reliving it, I began to feel this terrible sadness welling up inside me. I’d been so happy then. And I was so miserable now.

  “It was freezing on the way home,” I went on. “So Bob put the green mink blanket acro
ss our legs, and—”

  “Stop,” Gunner said. He said it quietly, but urgently. “Repeat what you just said.”

  “I said it was freezing on the way home, and Bob put the green mink blanket across our legs.”

  “What green mink blanket?”

  “The one he kept in the car for cold weather.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It’s this gorgeous blanket from Pianissimo. Like a throw, you know? It’s dark green mink and cashmere. He had it custom-dyed to match the Rolls.”

  Gunner was silent. I snaked my head around and looked at him. He was staring hard into space, his eyes burning with intensity, like he was about to ignite.

  “What?”

  “You say he kept this blanket in the car?”

  “Yes.” I sat up.

  “All the time?”

  “Yes…well, probably just in the winter for the cold weather. It was very cozy. Why?”

  “How many times did you see it?”

  “I don’t know. It was always in the car. Oh, one time it was in the trunk, and Maxwell got it out for us.”

  It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the green mink blanket had something to do with the case. I hadn’t been watching all those forensic shows with Violet for nothing. I knew that forensics were pretty much the only way to go these days.

  “They found a green hair on Amber, didn’t they? I’m right, aren’t I? Did they find green hairs on Amber?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I knew it was another detail that had been kept from the public.

  I was beside myself.

  “Jesus…I’m gonna buy a gun,” I said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am. They changed the law, and you can’t stop me.”

  “You still need a permit. I don’t recommend it.”

  “Great. So what happens if he comes after me?”

  “He won’t. He doesn’t go after women he knows well. And he doesn’t go after blondes. Poll didn’t date any of these girls. He only knew them casually, if at all.”

  Gunner left in a hurry after that, leaving me to cope with the idea that I’d not only dated a serial killer, I’d been jilted by one.

  Chapter 29

  After I told Violet about Gunner’s reaction to the green mink blanket, she was convinced that Bob was the Beltway Basher. We fantasized about the day Mr. Poll was charged, and Melody had to stand by her man in court, wearing a tailored pastel suit, the preferred uniform of wives with publically disgraced husbands. It would be one of the biggest cases ever, Bob was so rich and so high-profile.

  Violet said he kind of reminded her of Jack Unterweger, yet another sexually sadistic psychopath I’d never heard of. She gave me an article on the charismatic Austrian journalist and darling of Viennese society who turned out to be a serial killer of prostitutes. Unterweger denied his involvement in the crimes right up until he hanged himself in his prison cell. In a creepy twist, he left proof of his guilt by using the same complicated slipknot on his own noose that the murderer had used on his victims. It was a good grisly read.

  “Jack couldn’t admit it, but he still wanted everyone to know he’d done it because serial killers are such narcissists at heart—just like Bob,” Violet explained. She was the expert. Too much of an expert, in fact.

  Much as I appreciated her hospitality, it seemed like every conversation we had wound up with Violet referencing some ghoul who’d taken multiple lives. You try being fed a daily dose of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Andrei Chikatilo, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, Gary Ridgway, the Zodiac. And lest we forget the ladies: Aileen Wuornos, Nannie Doss, Belle Gunness, Marybeth Tinning, and Sister Amy. I began to have more sympathy for Grant. I finally put my foot down and told her: “Tell me about deadheading roses, not people, for a change.”

  It was as if Violet needed to surround herself with darkness in order to feel better about her own life. I think that’s called depression. She was only making things worse by tormenting herself.

  I tried hiding the Style section of the Post and the various social magazines so she wouldn’t see all the parties to which she was not invited. But, perversely, she wanted to know all the stuff that was going on without her so she could wallow in her own exclusion. She went ballistic if she saw a picture of Grant and Cynthia. She kept track of all the hostesses who invited them and not her. She drew up two lists, one headed “The Quick,” comprised of friends who kept in touch; the other headed “The Dead,” made up of friends she never heard from again.

  There were those who tried to maintain friendships with both Violet and Grant during this dicey period—the “Independents,” I called them. Some were people I’d always suspected of courting Violet simply because she was married to Grant. Having made such a big effort over her, they were now kind of stuck with her. She clung to them fiercely, like a candidate making sure of her super delegates, calling them up to remind them that they owed their allegiance strictly to her.

  Meanwhile, Cynthia made it clear that whoever saw Violet would never see her or Grant again. It didn’t take a genius to see that Violet wasn’t going to win that competition. President of the Potomac Bank plus major philanthropist versus dumped-on middle-aged housewife…? You tell me.

  One of the things Violet was most worried about was being kicked out of her International Club. The International Clubs are basically tony welcome wagons for the wives of ambassadors, senators, congressmen, cabinet members, and important government officials who arrive in Washington and don’t know a soul. They give influential newcomers an opportunity to mix and mingle with others of their ilk. The clubs are mainly for out-of-towners. However, they also include a handful of prominent Washington women. It was a reflection of Grant’s high status in the community that Violet had been invited to join. She was in the best club, too—the International Neighbors Club Number One, which had the most important ambassadors, or at least the ones with the showiest embassies.

  How Violet exulted in being a member of this elite little group! She loved the perks and special excursions, like the private tour of Blair House or brunch at the White House. Members were urged to supply some form of entertainment for the group. Thanks to Grant, Violet took everyone to New York for a private tour of the gold vault of the Federal Reserve Bank. I hinted that I would love to see the ninety billion dollars worth of gold bullion glinting away in cages eighty feet below the streets of lower Manhattan. Friend that she was, she let me tag along. When certain people protested that I was not a member, she ignored them.

  She knew that after Grant divorced her, she’d be asked to resign, and there’d be no more social perks and private trips.

  “They’ll kick me out as soon as the divorce is final!” she confided to me tearfully, citing the wife of a famous journalist who was asked to resign after her husband died suddenly.

  Violet had pretended to poo-poo the whole notion of Washington society when she was quietly at its pinnacle. But now I understood just how much it really meant to her. Her desire to hang on to the top rung increased exponentially as she felt herself falling down the ladder.

  I felt so sorry for her. I urged her to quit tormenting herself and focus instead on her son and her charity work and particularly on the upcoming twenty-fifth Wheelock reunion, which Violet had agreed to host a long time ago. Many girls who hadn’t clapped eyes on each other since graduation were coming to Washington for this monumental occasion.

  Over the years, Violet had hosted any number of small events connected with the school—fund-raisers, lectures, musicales, and things of that nature. Why she, of all people, who had loathed and despised Wheelock, would have been the one to carry the torch of school spirit with such enthusiasm was a testament to revenge as much as anything else. These gatherings were opportunities for Violet to show her old classmates how well she had done in life despite her famously rocky start.

  But now she was threatening to call the party off. She blamed it on
the fact that her plans were up in the air, but I knew it was because she didn’t want anyone to see how her brilliant life had suddenly tarnished. After all those stellar entries in the alumnae bulletin, I certainly understood her predicament. It was humiliating. But so what? We all get humiliated at some point or another during our lives. The trick is not to let it make you resentful or defeatist. I told her she absolutely couldn’t cancel, that it would be a selfish act.

  “Listen to me, Violet. People have made plans, booked flights, hotel rooms, arranged tours of the city. They’re looking forward to this event, and there isn’t enough time to change the venue. Your life can’t stop just because Grant’s being such an asshole. And you can’t expect other people’s lives to stop either,” I said.

  She was adamantly opposed at first, but after many a long heart-to-heart, she finally agreed to go through with it—on one condition. If I came.

  “I don’t do reunions,” I said flatly.

  “Well, I won’t do this one without you,” she countered. “I need you there to hold my hand.”

  I reluctantly agreed, figuring I could always back out at the last moment. But I did begin to wonder if what upset Violet most was not that she had lost her husband, but that she had lost her social standing.

  After two weeks I felt strong enough to go back home. That’s when Violet gave me the gun. Grant had a big collection that he used to keep in their country house in Virginia. He had all kinds of guns—everything from antique muskets to modern handguns. Mr. Bolton Sr. had always given Grant a gun for his birthday ever since he was a boy. He took Grant on hunting trips because that’s what “real men” did, according to the elder Bolton.

  The den of their sprawling house near Middleburg had four Revolutionary War muskets and three eighteenth-century powder horns hanging above the stone fireplace. When they sold the house a few years back, all the guns got packed away and stored up in the attic on Q Street until Grant figured out what he wanted to do with them. Even though guns had been illegal in the District at that time, I doubt Grant or Violet ever gave it a second thought. What were the odds the police would bust in and search the house of a prominent family?