Welcome to Temptation

by Jennifer Crusie

  “There is no kind of people that includes you and me,” Liz said. “I always said Stephen married beneath him.”

  Virginia went white, only two spots of color high on her cheeks.

  “Did you push Diane?” Liz said.

  Virginia drew herself up. “If I had, it would have been just what she deserved, grabbing your son like that, ruining his life. If I had, you should be thanking me now. But I didn’t. Nobody pushed her. She was a slutty little drunk who fell down her own steps.”

  “Here’s what I know,” Liz said. “I know you took my husband’s gun from my house because you’re the only one who visited me there. I know you put it in Sophie’s bed because you started the gossip that it had been found. I know you know the farm and could have frayed that wire in the fuse box with no trouble at all.”

  “That’s not proof,” Virginia said. “You don’t have any proof because I didn’t do anything.”

  “I know you were out there watching with Stephen the night Sophie was pushed in the river,” Liz said. “You wouldn’t miss something like that. Sophie saw Stephen right before she was pushed —so it couldn’t have been him— so you pushed her in, and when that didn’t work, you stole my gun and put it in her bed, and when that didn’t work you tried to electrocute her. You are dumb as a rock, Virginia, but what I still don’t know is if you shot that man.”

  “He met somebody on the river path,” Sophie said.

  “Wes got that far: that Zane had an appointment to meet somebody behind the Garvey house.”

  “He was trying to blackmail all of us,” Hildy said, helpfully. “He must have had something on her.”

  “He had a file on Diane’s death,” Liz said. “He brought it to me and tried to convince me she’d been murdered. He said if we didn’t stop the video, he’d do a human-interest piece on it, investigate it, solve the mystery, create a scandal. Except I didn’t push Diane, and neither did my son, so I sent him away.”

  “My God,” Sophie said, watching Virginia’s face. “You did push Diane.”

  “You just shut up,” Virginia said. “You’re just like her, but I did not push her.”

  “You met him on the path because he was trying to blackmail you, and you shot him,” Liz said. “How did you get him to the farm dock? He would have been heavy. Unless ...” Liz frowned in thought. “Unless you convinced him to let you take him home.” She nodded. “That was it, wasn’t it? You told him you’d take care of him and you rowed him across the river, and when he got out onto the dock on his own, then you shot him. You mothered him to death. That would be like you. And you got Stephen to cover your car accidents, and me to harass my son about Sophie for you, so you could certainly get that stupid man to travel to his own death.”

  “You shot him from a boat?” Hildy looked at Virginia with disgust. “That’s why you missed at close range and why the angle was so off. You shot him while you were standing in a boat. What kind of idiot are you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Virginia said. “But I want you to know I’m deeply hurt by this. And I’m leaving.”

  She looked deeply enraged, to Sophie.

  “Of course, we can’t prove any of this,” Hildy said gloomily to Liz, as Virginia reached past her to tug at the door.

  She’s going to get away with it, Sophie thought, and then she saw Liz smile her cobra smile.

  “We don’t have to prove it,” Liz said. “We’ll just talk.”

  “What?” Hildy frowned, and then brightened. “Oh. Yes. We will. We’ll talk a lot, Virginia.”

  Oh, excellent, Sophie thought.

  Virginia stopped tugging on the door.

  “About how much you hate Sophie,” Hildy went on happily. “About how you don’t have an alibi for the shooting.” Hildy let her eyes slide to Virginia’s face. “About how Rachel ran to L.A. to get away from you.”

  Virginia’s face went red. “She didn’t. Rachel and I are very close. And—”

  “We’ll tell everybody what a lousy mother you are,” Hildy said. “We don’t have to take you to Wes. We’re taking care of this ourselves.”

  “Unless,” Liz said.

  Virginia turned to her, seething.

  “At the council meeting today,” Liz said. “We’re going to be watching your vote very closely.”

  “You can’t—” Virginia began again.

  “Yes, we can.” Hildy was practically bouncing on her toes now. “One wrong vote and we hit the phones. And people will listen. They always listen, don’t they, Virginia?”

  Virginia eyes darted from Hildy to Liz. She looked like a trapped mink, and Sophie would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been such a miserable excuse for a human being.

  “Cross me again and I’ll destroy you,” Liz said to Virginia. “Don’t ever come after my family again.”

  “I didn’t—” Virginia said.

  “And that includes Sophie,” Liz said.

  Sophie felt a catch in the back of her throat.

  “Right, that’s the other part of the deal,” Hildy was saying. “You have to stop trying to kill Sophie. She gets a hangnail, and we pick up the phone.”

  Virginia drew a deep breath in through her teeth and looked at Sophie like death.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Liz Tucker said. “You touch her, you say one word against her, and I’ll bring you so low not even Junie Martin will give you the time of day.”

  “Jeez,” Sophie said.

  Liz looked at Sophie for the first time since they’d arrived. “Don’t ever cross a Tucker.”

  “No ma’am,” Sophie said.

  The council hall was full by the time Phin got there, and the crowd was clearly not a happy one, but only Ed and Frank sat at the council table.

  Amy and Sophie came in and sat down in the front row.

  “ ‘This isn’t the junior chamber of commerce, Brad,’ ” Sophie said to Amy.

  Amy nodded, looking around at the marble and walnut. “ ‘Thank goodness we’re in a bowling alley.’ ”

  Nervous, Phin thought, and couldn’t blame them.

  Sophie turned and saw him. She stuck her chin out, and he thought, Oh, good, still frosty. Then Stephen and Virginia came in followed by Hildy and Liz, and he ignored Sophie to concentrate on the problem at hand.

  Stephen looked fat with satisfaction as he stopped to shake hands and nod to the populace, but Virginia looked tense and mad as hell. Hildy detoured around them and plopped down in the seat across from Phin. “ ‘Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,’ ” she said, but she didn’t look nervous at all.

  “What are you up to?” he said, and she beamed and said, “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Phin frowned at her, but then his mother sat down and shook his concentration. She had that look in her eye, the one she got right before she mutilated somebody: implacable will mixed with certainty of triumph.

  “Mom?” he said, and she shook her head and said, “It’s all right, Phin,” and he sat back, wary as hell.

  “All right,” Phin said. “Now all we need is Rachel and we can get started. Where—”

  “She’s gone,” Virginia said through her teeth, and Stephen looked at her, startled. “That woman—” She broke off as Hildy leaned forward and met her eyes. “She’s not here.”

  “Okay.” Phin nodded to Hildy. “Keep, the minutes, please.”

  “Of course,” Hildy said. “Although I’m only going to write down the intelligent things, so if anybody here was going to make a stupid speech, he can forget about getting it into the record.”

  “Hildy,” Phin said, and Stephen said, “I don’t need the record. I’ve got the whole town here, or most of it. And the ones that aren’t here will hear about it later.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Hildy said, and Phin wondered what the hell was happening under his nose. Besides his political ruin.

  “The first item of business,” Phin said, when they were all settled and the crowd ha
d stilled in anticipation, “is the streetlight vote that Stephen Garvey wants recalled.” A soft murmur of disappointment went up from the crowd, and Phin knew how the lions had felt in the Coliseum. “The motion on the floor is from Hildy Mallow, to purchase vintage reproduction streetlights for Temptation. Hildy, do you want to address this again?”

  “Just what I’ve said before,” Hildy said. “It makes a difference to people when they’re surrounded by beauty. We owe it to Temptation to look to the future.”

  “Anyone el—”

  “But we also owe it to Temptation to be fiscally responsible,” Stephen said, and waxed eloquent on fiscal responsibility for five minutes.

  Phin tuned him out and felt uneasy. The crowd was restless, but his mother and Hildy sat back, calm. That was wrong. “Anybody else?” Phin said, when Stephen had wound down. “No? Call the roll, Hildy.”

  “Garvey.”

  “Certainly not,” Stephen said.

  “Garvey,” Hildy purred, and Virginia turned to look at her.

  Across the table from Phin, his mother shook her head and Hildy nodded.

  Virginia smiled. “No.”

  Hildy turned to glare at Liz, who looked taken aback. “We need a little consensus here,” Hildy hissed at Liz, who whispered back, “Well, Stephen’s convinced people they’re too expensive.”

  The vote split, three to three —Frank voting with Hildy and Ed because fancier streetlights would make his development look better— and Phin broke the tie, saying, “Yes. Let’s go with posterity.”

  “Oh, sure,” somebody from the crowd called. “You care about our kids.”

  “That’s progeny,” Phin said. “Posterity is your kids’ kids.”

  “Phin,” his mother said, and he shrugged.

  “New business,” he said.

  “The water tower,” Stephen said, taking him by surprise. “We’re going to have to paint it again. It looks ... well, we’re just going to have to paint it.”

  “I like it,” Hildy said. “It’s not as good as the original color, of course, but if somebody hadn’t messed with it before, we wouldn’t have this problem now. It’s still pretty. Leave it be.”

  “You want that thing—”

  “Can I have a motion?” Phin said.

  “I move we paint the water tower white,” Stephen said, and Virginia started to say, “I second,” and then stopped.

  “We need a second,” Phin said to prod her.

  “I second,” Frank said. “What’s going on here?”

  “Call the roll, Hildy,” Phin said, before Stephen could get into the water tower as a further corrupter of the town’s children.

  “Garvey,” Hildy said, and Stephen said, “Yes!”

  Hildy turned to Liz and whispered audibly, “It does not get painted.”

  “It looks awful,” Liz hissed back.

  “Hildy?” Phin said. “The roll?”

  “Garvey,” Hildy said, and Virginia looked down the table.

  Liz nodded and Hildy shook her head.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Sophie said from behind them, and Liz and Hildy flinched.

  The vote split again, and Phin broke the tie by saying, “No, we’re not spending any more time or money on the water tower.”

  “Just what we’d expect from a porn mayor,” somebody in the crowd called out, and Phin said to Hildy, “How come you paint it and I get the flack?”

  “Because I’m a sweet old lady,” Hildy said. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”

  “Oh, sure,” Phin said. “If there’s no other new businesses—”

  Stephen opened his mouth.

  “—I have some. It has come to my attention that this council passed an ordinance that is unenforceable because of the vagaries in its wording.”

  Hildy blinked at him, and his mother looked alarmed.

  Phin said, “I move that the council repeal the antiporn ordinance it voted into effect two weeks ago before we get sued for overstepping somebody’s constitutional rights.”

  The murmur from the crowd sounded angry, but Ed’s “I second,” cut right across it.

  It was the first motion Ed had seconded in thirty years, and Phin looked at him appraisingly.

  “Good to see you got your thumb out of your butt, boy,” Ed said.

  “Thanks, Ed,” Phin said. “Discussion?”

  “I have discussion,” Stephen snapped. “Somebody clearly violated that ordinance—”

  “Can’t talk about that, Stephen,” Hildy said briskly. “We can only talk about the issue on the table.”

  “It didn’t violate anything,” Stephen said.

  “Yes, it did,” Phin said. “You can’t make a law against something you can’t define. And we didn’t define pornography. Therefore the ordinance is unconstitutional. We could get sued. For the protection of the town’s treasury, we have to repeal it.”

  “That is the biggest—”

  “I’ll call the roll,” Hildy said. “Garvey.”

  “No,” Stephen said. “This is—”

  “Garvey,” Hildy said over him, and turned razorlike eyes on Virginia.

  Virginia looked down the table, and raised her eyebrows, as smug as her husband.

  And Liz nodded with Hildy.

  “Garvey,” Hildy repeated viciously.

  Virginia swallowed. “Yes.”

  “What?” Stephen turned on his wife, white-faced. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Virginia votes her conscience, Stephen,” Hildy said crisply. “Now stop trying to intimidate a council member. Lutz.”

  “No,” Frank said. “They ruined my life and I want them to pay.”

  “That’s very adult of you, Frank,” Hildy said. “Mallow— yes. Tucker.”

  “Yes,” Liz said, and Phin thought, I have no idea what’s going on here, but I like it.

  “Yarnell,” Hildy said, and before Ed finished his “yes,” she said, “The motion passes.”

  “That pretty well wraps this up,” Phin said, and Stephen said, “Oh, no it doesn’t. Somebody showed pornography to our citizens and they should pay.”

  “And as soon as we find out who switched the tapes, Chief Mazur will arrest him,” Phin said. “But until then—”

  “What about the people who made the pornography?” Stephen said. “What about the person who abetted them? What about—”

  “Okay, I’ve had enough,” Sophie said, and Phin turned to see her standing up in the front row in her pink dress, looking like Gidget the Fury.

  Don’t do this, he thought, going tense in his chair. We were almost out of here.

  “I can speak, can’t I?” she said to Hildy. “As long as it’s on the issue?”

  “No, you can’t,” Stephen said, leaning forward to expound at the same time Hildy said, “Sure, go ahead.” Hildy turned back to Virginia and said, “Shut your husband up before he violates her freedom of speech.”

  Virginia stiffened and then said viciously under her breath, “Shut up, Stephen. This is all your fault anyway.”

  Stephen sat back, stunned, and Phin sympathized. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, either.

  Sophie cleared her throat, and Phin thought, Keep it short. He’d save her from the mob if he had to, but it would be a lot easier if she just apologized and sat down.

  “My name is Sophie Dempsey, and I’m responsible for the tape you saw last night.” The crowd began to murmur, and Sophie raised her voice. “I’m responsible, because I knew somebody had cut those obscene parts into the beautiful love story we made here, and I didn’t destroy that awful tape. And because I didn’t destroy it, somebody broke into our farmhouse and stole it and played it to you all last night. That was a horrible thing, an unforgivable thing, but I believe that your police chief will ultimately find out who was to blame. You have a terrific police force here.” The majority of the crowd stared back, hostile, but a couple of people nodded, and Amy folded her hands and put two fingers out, smiling to herself.

  “So
I apologize for my mistake,” Sophie went on smoothly. “You see, I love Temptation so much and I feel so safe here, I didn’t even lock my doors so it was easy to steal from me. That was stupid of me and I won’t make that mistake again.”

  A couple more people shook their heads at how dumb she’d been, but they looked vaguely sympathetic, and Amy extended three fingers.