I'd Kill For That

by Marcia Talley

  “What was that?” Lydia asked.

  “Sigmond’s Palm Pilot. He took it with him everywhere. It’s missing.”

  * * *

  Lt. Col. Lance J. McClintock, USMC, retired, a cigar clamped between stubby fingers, fanned out his cards with elaborate care. “One diamond.” His bushy eyebrows, shot with gray, settled over his horn-rims like awnings.

  Across the table, Camille frowned, whether at her husband or at the cards she held it was impossible to tell. Without looking up she said, “Christ, Lance. I wish you’d throw that damn thing away.”

  “What?” Lance screwed the wet end of the cigar into his mouth and lounged back in his chair. “It’s not like I’ve lit it or anything, sweetheart.”

  “No fighting, no biting!” Roman Gervase chided cheerfully. “Pass.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to them, Gervase,” Mignon said. “It’s a clever ruse. Meant to throw us off our game.”

  “Ha!” Camille squinted at her cards through her half-glasses. “One spade.”

  “Pass.” Mignon twiddled an earring, but if it was a secret signal to her husband he must have missed it. His eyes were glued on Barbara Blackburn, who had sashayed into the bar wearing an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse, electric blue capri pants, and high-heeled sandals.

  Lance noticed Barbara, too. “Nice buns.”

  “Your bid, Lance darling,” Camille drawled. “If you aren’t too, how shall I say, busy?”

  Lance grunted and returned to his hand. “One no trump.”

  Roman winked in the direction of Babs’s remarkable backside. “Nice scenery,” he muttered, “but I miss playing in the Wild Goose Room.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s six o’clock, for heaven’s sake! When do you think they’ll be finished in there?”

  “Haven’t the faintest, Ro baby,” Lance commented. “What’s your bid?”

  “Sorry. Got distracted for a minute. Pass.”

  Camille straightened in her chair, smiling broadly. “Three no trump.”

  “Pass,” said Mignon.

  “Pass,” said Lance.

  “Pass,” said Gervase.

  “Well bid, sweetheart,” Lance began to arrange his hand faceup on the table. “Do you need me, or may I wander over to the bar for a bit?”

  Camille scowled at her husband. “If I didn’t know better, Lance, I’d say you actually planned to be dummy.”

  Lance, who took his card playing as seriously as he had the command of his regiment in Kuwait, tapped the ace, queen, eight, and seven of diamonds into a neat cascade. “Cards is cards is cards, my dear. Can I get you anything?”

  Camille shook her head.

  “Single malt,” said Mignon as she led with the jack of hearts. “On the rocks.”

  Lance observed the play in silence until Camille finessed Roman’s king of diamonds and he knew they’d make their contract, with a trick or two to spare. “Carry on,” he said.

  “It doesn’t seem right for us to be going on like this, as if nothing had happened,” Mignon remarked, leading a ten of hearts.

  Lance laid a hand on Mignon’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Nothing we can do about it anyway, Mignon. We’ve told Captain Robards all we know. Life goes on.”

  Gervase considered his next play, nibbling on a well-chewed thumbnail. “It’s Rachel I feel sorry for,” he said, sluffing a three of spades. “Those two were like Ron and Nancy Reagan. Inseparable.”

  “I saw Rachel this afternoon,” a new voice said. Lance turned to see Lydia approaching from the direction of Michener Auditorium, looking radiant in a bright yellow pantsuit, her thick dark hair intricately and attractively braided. “She’s taking it very hard. But her mother’s with her now. And her brother.”

  Camille gathered up the last winning trick, jotted down the score, and stood. “Why don’t we call it quits for tonight? I can use a drink. Lydia? Will you join us?”

  “Thanks, but I need to talk to Lance.”

  Lance smiled. “What about?”

  “Didn’t you get my message?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t think so. I haven’t been home today.” He gestured toward the Wild Goose Room, where, presumably, Diane Robards was still holding forth with Ford and Carnegie. “Ned Carbury and I were last on the links last night, so Robards kept me in there for quite a while. She’s still talking to Ned.” Lance waved an arm toward a vacant table. “Let’s sit.”

  Lance eased himself into an upholstered chair and flagged down a passing server. “Another gin,” he said. “And the lady will have?”

  “White wine. Something crisp and cold.” Lydia leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table. “I have a favor to ask. Parker wants to know if you can delay your report on the managed deer hunt until next month.”

  Lance felt as if he’d taken a blow to the solar plexus. “No, ma’am. No can do.”

  If Lydia was upset by this news, she didn’t show it. “Why not?”

  “I’ve got people coming in to testify, that’s why. George Carroll from Sea Pines, Georgia, for one. And a guy from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Carroll’s going to recommend that we make it a bow-and-arrow hunt,” he continued, warming to his topic, “and open it up to young folks. A father-and-son thing.”

  Lydia winced. “Don’t push your luck, Lance.” She eased a notebook out of a pouch in her handbag and turned to a fresh page. “I’m setting up the agenda for Parker.” She uncapped her pen. “Do you want your guys on before or after we talk about Vanessa’s Forest Glen development?”

  “After, I think.” Their drinks had arrived, and he took a generous sip, savoring the coolness of the alcohol as it lingered on his tongue, enjoying the tart twist of lime that had decorated the glass.

  Lydia scribbled something in her notebook. “Good. So we’ll put Vanessa on first. Then I’ll bring on my experts.” She reached for a bowl of mixed nuts that sat on the table between them, picked out a handful of roasted almonds, and tossed a few absentmindedly into her mouth. “I think I’ve found a way to stop Vanessa cold.”

  Lance smiled around his glass. “May I ask?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll want to be surprised, along with everybody else.”

  “Does it involve weapons?” Lance hooted. “The only thing that will stop Vanessa cold is an elephant gun.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Babs Blackburn shouted from a nearby bar stool.

  “Babs, baby!” Lance waved his drink high in the air. “Come over and join us!”

  “Sure thing, honey. Anybody trashing that trashy Vanessa is definitely a friend of mine.” Holding her drink, a tall pink concoction, in one hand and a column of paper-umbrella-skewered fruit in the other, Babs wriggled off her stool, weaved across the carpet, and plopped herself down in the chair across from Lydia. In the dimly lit bar something flashed across the ceiling.

  “Gorgeous ring, Babs,” Lydia said.

  Babs extended her hand and waggled her fingers over the table. “It is gorgeous, isn’t it? Henry gave it to me.” Plump, crimson lips closed around her straw, and Lance watched in fascination as the liquid rose, like a thermometer, into her mouth. “Vanessa is going to be so pissed when she sees it!”

  “I wouldn’t mention it if I were you,” Lance suggested. Married or divorced, if he ever gave a three-carat diamond to another woman, Camille would have reduced him to smithereens.

  Babs shrugged. “She’ll find out soon enough anyway, Lance. We met with Peter Armbruster at the chapel yesterday.” Even in the subdued lighting her face was radiant. “The wedding’s set for June.”

  “Congratulations!” Laura Armbruster elbowed her way through the crowd that had been gathering around the bar and bent to kiss Babs on the cheek. “Peter told me about the wedding yesterday. I’ve been dying to tell someone, but … well, you know: seal of the confessional!”

  Babs beamed up at the club manager. “We’ll want to have the reception here, of course.”

  “Of course.” Laura patted the bride-to-be’s
shoulder. “You and Henry come in next week, say Wednesday or Thursday, and we’ll start talking details.”

  “Oh, Henry’s leaving all that to me,” Babs said.

  Laura’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “I see. Well, give me a call. Soonest. We’ve no time to lose!”

  “I’ll want you to get that ice sculpture guy…” Babs began. She tipped her glass and sucked on her straw until the liquid remaining in the bottom of the glass gurgled. “… and whoever you got to do the music for the Steinberg bar mitzvah.”

  “No problem,” Laura called over her shoulder as she turned and headed toward the auditorium. “I’ve got to check to make sure Ray’s set up the projector for tonight. See you later.”

  “Speaking of tonight,” Lydia said, checking her watch. “I wonder where Parker is? He said he was planning to take off a bit early.”

  “Traffic,” said Lance. He gestured toward the large-screen television that hung from wrought-iron brackets over the bar. On the screen Wolf Blitzer was silently mouthing the latest news from Iraq as closed captioning crawled across his tie. “If Laura kept that damn set tuned to anything other than CNN, maybe we’d get the local traffic report.” Lance stood and waved over the cluster of heads that separated him from the bar. “Tiffany!”

  The young bartender looked up from the blender, where, judging from the pink liquid sloshing around inside, a refill for Babs was being prepared. She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Switch to Channel Two, will you?”

  “Okay,” Tiffany shouted. “But if Mrs. Armbruster asks, I’ll tell her you forced me to do it.”

  “Fair enough,” Lance shouted back. “And Tiffany? Another for me, when you get the chance!”

  “Make that a light one,” suggested Camille, neatly extricating herself from a conversation with two women wearing designer jogging suits in which, Lance was sure, they’d never broken a sweat. Camille carried an Irish coffee topped with a generous dollop of whipped cream. She kissed the air next to her husband’s cheek. “Careful, Colonel. You have to speak tonight.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He offered the chair he had just vacated to his wife, then stood at attention behind it, arms folded, his eyes on the television.

  “Ummmm,” cooed Camille, squirming more deeply into the cushions. “Nicely warmed. Thank you, darling.”

  Somewhere a cell phone chirped.

  Lance reached for the instrument attached to his belt.

  Camille rummaged in her fanny pack.

  Babs patted her pocket.

  Lydia bent over to retrieve her purse. “Mine, I think. I set Parker’s number to The William Tell Overture.”

  “When my mother calls, Camille’s phone plays ‘The Dead March’ from Saul,” Lance muttered cheerfully.

  “Get out!” Babs giggled.

  “Guilty!” Camille laughed. “Dum dum de dum, dum de dum de dum de dum. It’s a hoot.”

  Across the hall from the bar the green baize door that led to the Wild Goose Room burst open. As they watched open-mouthed, Leland Ford spilled out, his hand resting on his weapon as he sprinted down the hall toward the lobby. Next came John Carnegie, moving slowly but deliberately in the same direction. Behind John, Diane Robards paused to speak into the two-way radio that crackled from a clip attached to her left shoulder. “Tell them not to let anybody in until I get there.” And then she, too, was gone, leaving Sen. Ned Carbury sitting in a leather armchair, framed in the open doorway like a prisoner on death row. Carbury unfolded his long legs, shook them as if to get the circulation going, and wandered out of the Wild Goose Room and into the bar.

  “What the hell?” Lance asked the senator.

  “Damned if I know,” Carbury replied. “She got this call, then they took off.” Carbury whomped Lance on the back. “’Scuse me while I get a drink, old friend. Talking to that lot,” he hooked a thumb in the direction of the front door, “one works up a thirst.”

  Meanwhile, Lydia had located her cell phone and flipped it open. “Hey, ho.” She listened for a while, her face morphing from cheerful anticipation, to puzzlement, to astonishment, and finally to disbelief. “Switch to Channel Four,” she shouted to Tiffany behind the bar. “And turn up the sound. Parker says there are TV cameras and mobs of demonstrators at the gate. He can’t even get his car through.”

  Lance watched as, one by one, heads turned in the direction of the TV and fifty-some pairs of eyes focused on a reporter wearing a bright red blazer and sporting a hairdo reminiscent of the seventies. Babs pointed with her glass. “Call Channel Four and tell them that Barbie wants her hair back,” she jeered.

  Camille poked Babs with an index finger. “Shhhhh! I want to hear what she’s saying!”

  “… also the scene earlier today of the mysterious death of Dr. Sigmond Vormeister, a prominent sociologist and scholar.”

  As they watched, the reporter turned and, with a broad sweep of her arm, indicated the crowd behind her. The camera followed, panning the line of demonstrators, three deep in places, that blocked the drive leading to Gryphon Gate. Some carried signs: Speak Up for the Swans! and Stop the Slaughter! and S.O.S.—Save Our Swans!

  Camille gaped at her husband. “Thank God they don’t know about the deer, Lance.”

  The reporter paused to interview an untidy woman holding an S.O.S. sign, who had it on good authority that the Gryphon Gate Town Council was planning a mass slaughter of the mute swans living and breeding within its community boundaries. As the reporter moved on to the next demonstrator, those watching in the bar could see John Carnegie and Leland Ford holding back the crowd to allow Parker’s dark green BMW to ease through the gates, followed by a limousine and a car bearing the distinctive logo of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

  “That’ll be my guy,” said the colonel.

  “And mine,” said Lydia.

  “How about the fellow from Georgia?” asked Camille.

  “Henry’s at BWI picking him up in the helicopter,” said Babs. “He called about an hour ago. They’re on their way.”

  “And now,” the reporter with Barbie’s hair was saying, “we switch to John Mann, on the scene inside the exclusive Gryphon Gate community. John, I understand you’ve talked to some of the residents. What do they have to say?”

  “Thank you, Jean. I’m standing outside the Gryphon Gate Community Recreation Center, and I have with me here Toni Sinclair and her daughter, eight-year-old Miranda.” The reporter, fresh-scrubbed and gently moussed, thrust his microphone toward the little girl. “Miranda, please tell the people why you’re holding a lighted candle.”

  “What the hell!” Lance erupted. While Miranda patiently explained to the 350,000 viewers tuned into Channel Four’s seven o’clock news about the bad men who were going to murder Bambi’s mother, the camera followed a train of Gryphon Gate residents, all holding candles and singing something to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree.”

  “How did that reporter get in?” Babs sputtered. “Henry will be absolutely furious!”

  “Oh forest deer, oh woodland deer, how lovely are your antlers,” Miranda sang in a high, clear voice.

  Lance was already on his feet. “I’ll take care of this,” he said. “Either someone invited the bastard in,” he waved a finger at the television screen, where Toni, holding her candle high, was beaming at her daughter, “or, he climbed over the wall. Either way, he’s toast!”

  * * *

  Freed at last from the clutches of the mob, Parker Upshaw escorted the little caravan of cars up the tree-lined drive that led to the country club, circled around the parking lot, pulled under the antebellum-style portico that protected the lobby from the capriciousness of the Maryland weather, and cut off his engine. He was just wondering when the nightmare was going to end when Lance McClintock, with Camille on his heels, spun through the revolving glass doors and erupted onto the driveway.

  As he passed, Lance rapped on the hood of Parker’s car. “C�
��mon,” he shouted. “There’s a reporter loose outside the rec center!”

  Parker was weighing whether to follow Lance or see to his guests, when Sen. Ned Carbury burst through the door followed by half a dozen stalwarts of the Gryphon Gate community, some with drinks still in their hands. “Go get ’em, tiger,” Parker called as Jerry Lynch flew past, comb-over flopping and ice cubes rattling. Parker didn’t know what reporter they were talking about, but he felt sorry for the guy if that drunken mob ever caught up with him.

  By then his companions had stepped from their vehicles and were watching, wide-eyed, as what must have seemed like half the population of Gryphon Gate streamed past, making a hullabaloo like sixth graders on the last day of school. “They’re racing to the rec center,” Parker explained, thinking fast. “Probably playing Catch the Pig and somebody lost.”

  “Catch the Pig?”

  “A bar game. Uses dice.”

  Cheryl Madsen gazed at the pack receding in the distance and laughed, “Where do I sign up?”

  Ray Flynt, wearing tan pants and a red jacket, came loping up the drive from the direction of the parking lot. “What the hell? Not another murder I hope?”

  Parker handed Ray his car keys and indicated that the other drivers should do the same. “Just a few high-spirited citizens, is all.” He turned to Cheryl and to Glenn Gibbs, Lydia’s expert from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We’ve been under a bit of pressure, lately. One of our residents has been killed.”

  Glenn paled. “How terrible!”

  “Yes. It’ll be all over the Post in the morning, I’m afraid.”

  Parker deposited his experts in the bar and went to find his wife. After a hasty consultation with Henry Drysdale, who had just arrived via go-cart from the helipad with George Carroll in tow, they decided that the meeting would go on. And if Lance hadn’t returned with his posse by the time they were scheduled to begin, tough.

  When Parker thought about it later, he chided himself for not seeing it coming, for not doing something, anything to prevent the tragedy. In hindsight it seemed so predictable, like a B-movie script with characters straight from central casting.