Two heavy-looking, oversized canvas ski-carriers, same style as those in the Jag, were slung over his shoulders, and he put them down with a solid clunk and stepped forward.
“Kennedy McGee.” He extended a knotted, rough hand. The Great White Hunter.
“Lilly Bennett.”
“Pleased to meet you. It’s you who was at the party last night with all the police and whatnot.”
“Yes,” I answered, curious about what was in the
carriers. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet. Are you leaving?”
Kennedy nodded. His face hid a million secrets. “I’m just on my way up to hospital to see Alma before I make my way to Jackson. I have a client there. They have a large ranch outside of town.”
“Everybody in Jackson has a large ranch outside of town,” I said.
“Yes.” He smiled uncertainly. “Quite.”
Here’s the deal with ranches around here: If you’re an actual Westerner, as I am, you consider anything up to a hundred acres a yard and anything between a hundred and five hundred acres a farm or feedlot or something like that. It’s possible to have a small ranch with a thousand acres, but you’d better have some pretty fine real estate and some pretty fine cattle or sheep on it to call it a ranch, and even then, you call it one with an aw-shucks attitude: “It’s really too little to call it a ranch,” you apologize. “We just call it that. It’s really more of a small property.” From there you move on up into real ranch territory until you get to spreads like the Circle B, which at two hundred thousand acres is bigger than some national forests. There are only a handful of places like ours left in the country, so I don’t expect everyone’s ranch to be the size of ours—anything over a couple of thousand acres is certainly respectable ranch property—but when I come across outsiders (usually New Yorkers) who say they have a ten-acre ranch in Jackson, I can’t help laughing right in their faces because they sound like idiots and they’re just parroting what their stupid developers and
People
magazine have told them.
“May I ask what’s in the ski bags, Mr. McGee?”
“Skis, of course,” he said lightheartedly. I heard the
bravado in his voice. “Alma has been storing them for me.”
“May I see them?”
“They’re just skis.”
“And what else?”
“Nothing that would be of any interest to you. Just some personal trophies.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling the navy-leather wallet from my purse. The United States Marshal badge glittered like brass knuckles. “I should have started with this. Unzip them, please.”
“Oh, I forgot,” McGee delivered his most beguiling smile. “Alma told me you were a sheriff or something. I’ve always loved women in uniform. Don’t you need some sort of paperwork, some sort of warrant to search my luggage?”
I gave him
my
most beguiling smile. “You think this is a game. That I’ll handcuff you and lock you up and maybe even spank you or talk dirty to you until you do what I tell you. Just like all your girls out there in the Serengeti, or whatever you call it.”
McGee laughed, a big, hearty bellow. His teeth were white and straight. “Oh, you are truly delightful, Miss Bennett. I’m so sorry your fiancé met you first.”
“But alas, Mr. McGee,” I concluded, “I’m not playing. I am a real marshal, and I want to see what’s in your bags. It’ll be easy enough for me to get a warrant—might slow you down a little—but if that’s what you prefer.” My heart was thudding, racing. I was afraid I knew what the bags hid, and I dreaded being right. My fingers rested lightly on the weapon in my pocket as the smile left McGee’s face. He wiped sweat from his hands on his pants legs before kneeling to unzip the first carrier.
I wanted to throw up. I wanted to shoot him. I wanted to cry.
The elephant tusks screamed like the skeletons of Auschwitz. Ghastly, gruesome, deathly, savage.
“Oh, Mr. McGee,” I said, losing my breath. “How can you sleep at night?” I went to the open door to signal for the patrolman to join us, then I read the animal his rights. “Kennedy McGee, I’m placing you under arrest for possession of contraband. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand what I’ve just said?”
“These aren’t actually mine,” he said easily. “They’re Alma’s.”
“Do you understand what I’ve just said?” I approached him and snapped a handcuff around one wrist.
“Yes, of course I do. But I’d like to explain.”
“I understand that for someone in your business lying becomes a way of life.” I led him over to the birdcage and snapped the other handcuff around one of the bars. “But don’t say another word to me unless you want to incriminate yourself further.”
“Do you want me to take him downtown, Marshal?” the patrolman asked.
I looked Kennedy McGee in the eye. I wanted to say, “No, I want you to take him out behind the house and shoot him,” but said instead, “No thanks. He’s in federal custody. This is a federal matter. I’ll take it from here.”
“They’re Alma’s,” McGee insisted.
I called my deputy, Dwight Alexander, the handsome, stupid, sexy U.S. Marshal Service poster boy, and told him to get his pants on and get on over to the Gilhoolys’ to transport a prisoner back to the little jail
in Bennett’s Fort, and if the prisoner put up any resistance or was disrespectful, to feel free to shoot him (I looked Kennedy McGee in the eye as I said this). Then I called Jack Lewis.
“Chief Lewis,” he yapped.
“Jack, it’s Lilly. I’m at the Gilhooly residence, where I’ve just arrested a fellow for smuggling elephant tusks, and I wondered if there were anything you’d like me to check out while I’m here.”
“Excuse me?” he said. “Do we have a bad connection? I think I just heard you say you were at the Gilhooly residence.”
“Yup.” I grinned. I could picture him perfectly. At the sound of my voice he’d jumped to his feet and was now standing arrow-straight at his desk, white-knuckled hand gripping the phone. “I am. And, as I’m sure you know, Alma Gilhooly’s not going to survive, so you’ll have a murder investigation on your hands and it doesn’t look like anyone’s out here working on it very hard.” I loved sticking it to Jack.
As I explained the circumstances, the postman drove up and handed me the mail. “Here you go, Mrs. Gilhooly,” he whispered. “Nice to meet you finally.”
“You, too,” I mouthed back while Jack ranted and raved and laid down the terms and conditions of our cooperative arrangement of Alma’s homicide investigation. I flipped through the large stack of letters and bills. Nothing too earth-shaking, except two items: an agenda for the Annual Stockholders’ Meeting of the Rutherford Oil Company addressed to Alma as chairman of the Executive Committee of the board, and a typed letter addressed to Alma R. Gilhooly from the Freedom Wyoming Coalition, our own homegrown militia wackos. They’d be funny if they weren’t so dangerous.
Dwight arrived shortly, and after placing large evidence stickers on the canvas bags, we loaded them into his white government Suburban with the blacked-out windows. Then he shoved Kennedy McGee into the backseat.
“I swear to God, these are not mine,” McGee was clearly frightened. He’d lost his color. A little tremor appeared in his hands, and a little sweat appeared around his brow and stained the back of his starched shirt.
“It’s really too bad,” I said through the open car door. “You look like a man, but you act like a girl. Next you’ll probably start crying. Where were you when Alma Gilhooly was shot?”
“I don’t know. With Mrs. Bromley, I suppose.”
Velma Bromley was one of Roundup’s richest widows: a perfect mark for a Great White Hunter.
“At the party?”
“No.”
“You were not at this party last night?” I repeated.
“No. I’m staying at Mrs. Bromley’s. We were probably having dinner or something.”
“You were not at Alma’s party and you did not have a conversation with Mercedes Rutherford?”
“Never.”
“We’ll see.” I knew he was lying.
I slammed the car door. “That’s it, Dwight. Take him to the Fort.”
“I don’t know anyone here,” Kennedy wailed. “At least give me the name of a lawyer.”
“Call Paul Decker,” I shouted as the Suburban pulled away. “Dwight’ll give you his number. He’ll have you out in a day or two. You shithead.”
I was just about to go back inside, find Wade, and tell him good-bye, when a pearl-gray Cadillac Seville
barreled down the driveway and slid to a noisy stop in the gravel by the garage. The car door flew open and a man in a yellow-plaid sport coat and green slacks jumped out and raced through a side door. I decided to follow him.
He was about halfway down the hall when Wade’s voice called from the study, “I’m in here, Jim.”
I stopped outside and leaned against the wall.
“I just heard about Alma,” Jim said. “I can’t believe it. This is terrible.”
“I know,” Wade answered. His voice sounded tired, slightly incredulous. “I can’t believe it either.”
This was followed by one of those long, uncomfortable, self-conscious pauses so typical of men trapped in emotional circumstances. “How are
you
feeling, boss?” Jim asked. “You don’t look too good.”
“Like hell. Doctor said if I don’t get any better in the next few days I’m going to have to go in for some tests.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Jim asked.
“I’m counting on you to run the operation for the next few days. I know it’s just a matter of hours for Alma, and I need to get her funeral and stuff worked out. I hired that cookie, Lilly Bennett, to look into whoever shot Alma. She’s supposed to be pretty good.”
Cookie. Huh.
“Help yourself to a drink. I have to go find my briefcase. I think I left it in my car.” Ice clinked into a glass. “Vodka’s in the freezer.”
Jim poured what sounded like a lot.
“You’re booked on the three o’clock.”
“You want me to go
back
to Billings?”
“Yeah,” Wade said testily. “I want you to go, and I’ll tell you when I want you to come home. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
I slid around the corner and concealed myself behind an armoire as Wade headed down the hall in the direction of the garage. Once he was gone, I let myself out the front door.
Richard was sitting about halfway up in Bennett Auditorium listening to the stage manager, lighting designer, and director straighten out the garden scene between Fiordiligi and her sister Dorabella, two of
Così fan tutte
’s three divas. Unlike the new breed of glamour divas, these two were a couple of tanks, but they were the only set of identical twin sopranos in the world, which, according to Richard, was what the guest conductor and director wanted. I slipped in beside him.
“Hey,” he said, and took my hand. “What a nice surprise. Come on, let’s go grab a sandwich. This is going to drag on for hours.”
Over a club sandwich and some Jamesons on the rocks at the Cattlemen’s Club, I explained all that had gone on so far.
“Look at this.” I pulled the Rutherford Oil agenda from my purse. “Alma’s chairman of the Executive Committee. I had no idea of the scope of this proxy fight—it’s unbelievable. Wade filled me in this morning. Initial investment of six billion dollars.”
“Let me guess,” Richard said. “Mercedes is in favor. Alma’s against.”
“No. Other way around. Plus, she’s yanked cash patronage from Johnny Bourbon for his ministry unless he divorces Shanna and marries her; from Kennedy McGee for his African resort unless I don’t know what; and from Senator Fletcher because he voted in favor of some environmental bill, which should be no surprise to anybody since environmental protection is his whole
platform in the first place. They’re all furious at her. And to top the whole thing off, she’s making big gifts to a Wyoming militia group.”
Richard laughed and shook his head. “She’s a one-woman tsunami. The Leona Helmsley of the Rockies.”
“Exactly.”
Richard sipped his Glenfiddich and looked me in the eye. “Speaking of hotels,” he said. “What have you got on for this afternoon?”
“I was sort of thinking about a small suite at the Grand.”
He smiled. “Me, too.”
W
ell, the suite had been a fine idea, but as Richard signed the luncheon check, the hundred-year-old waiter handed him a note from his silver platter that said the Cost twins had thundered back to their hotel like a brace of hysterical elephants and would not return until the wardrobe mistress was replaced.
“I don’t know how you put up with all these prima donnas,” I said. “I’d just tell them to get a damn grip.”
“If I can withstand the Moscow State Orchestra getting loaded on vodka and beer during the
Tosca
intermissions at Viareggio,” he said taking my hand—his neck and hands were still covered with red bumps from all the mosquito bites he’d endured in the pit as the star guest conductor at the Puccini Festival—“a couple of fat, spoiled twins from Düsseldorf are nothing.”
At least we had time for a lingering kiss in the elevator.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.
* * *
No matter how hard you pray, nor how powerful your connection to God, it is simply not possible to keep a tent standing in Wyoming for more than two minutes. Especially a big tent. So Johnny Bourbon had built a glass-walled, prestressed-concrete tent—The Cowboy Cathedral—to house his ministry safely indoors but also to give it that old-time-religion, tent-crusade ambience. The offices were in a modern building out back. Miles of completely full parking lots surrounded the complex.
I parked in a tow-away zone by the front door.
A young man in a powder-blue jumpsuit, white cowboy boots, a white cowboy hat, and mirrored dark glasses rolled to a silent stop in a golf cart next to my Jeep. “Sorry, ma’am, you can’t park there. But it’ll be my pleasure to lead you to the closest spot and give you a lift back.”
I flipped down my marshal’s visor. “Official business.” I smiled back.
“Sure thing.” He pulled onto the sidewalk and dismounted, came over and held my door while I climbed out. “What can we do for you?” His face was unblemished, his expression untroubled, and his blue eyes could have had rhinestones sparkling from them.