Something Wicked (7 page)

Annie slid forward eagerly in her seat when they reached the enormous circular drive that served the Petree mansion. The drive was jammed with cars parked along both sides. Two stewards from the country club served as valet parking attendants. Light spilled from every window of the two-story, Mediterranean-style home, and the blare of Dixieland jazz reached the foot of the drive. As they began the long walk up to the front door, Annie began to feel festive. She loved Dixieland, Sheridan always had fabulous food, and the interior of the Petree house was unsurpassed for grandiosity.

Max considered the house, which had the stark grace of a villa perched on a Greek headland, to be an abused possession, lovely on the outside, rotten on the inside. In sunlight, its white stucco exterior glistened, as hard as Portland cement. Now, at night, it had the rich gleam of a moonlit Parthenon. Spotlights in the garden illuminated the brilliantly purple bougainvillea clinging to the facade. But the exterior of the house didn’t hint at the opulence of the interior, the sheer, overwhelming, sense-assaulting ostentation. Ribbed brass ceilings glittered like gold bullion, satin-covered furniture glistened like luxurious pincushions, bronze-and-crystal chandeliers gleamed like shiny ribbons of neon. Here was a material glorification of the sensual, the visual equivalent to a romp in a California hot tub or its historical precursor, a Roman bath. Annie wondered if the other guests shared her faintly decadent feeling. If so, they hid it beneath social faces as they eddied across the pink marbled foyer into the enormous living room with its lush polar-white carpet, mirrored back wall, and, centerpiece of the room, a six-foot-tall oil derrick of gleaming Steuben glass.

Sheridan Petree stood beside the shimmering statue, her scarlet lips curved in a faint smile. Her hair swung long and loose and was the dusty gold of the Serengeti Plain. Her
backless lamé dress, molded to her generous figure, repeated the gold motif of the ceiling. She looked past a circle of admirers at Annie and Max and lifted a heavy crystal goblet in salute.

“All she lacks is a twenty-one-gun salute,” Annie murmured.

Max took her elbow and maneuvered her past a group of grazers clustered near the buffet. “Do I sense hostility, love?”

“There’s something about Sheridan that rouses even my most dormant hostilities,” she admitted. Was it because to her Sheridan and Shane epitomized the idle rich? But Max was, most of the time, idly rich. She couldn’t pretend his forays for Confidential Commissions amounted to more than an interesting hobby. But Max was
attractively
rich. And the Petrees, to her mind, were most unattractively odious, self-absorbed, snobbish, lazy—and very, very rich. Sheridan’s father had been quite famous in west Texas. Hunter Prentiss was a roistering, self-made oil man who had made and lost a half dozen fortunes, but, fortunately for Sheridan, was on a high roll when he was killed nine years before in a barroom brawl. Sheridan made reference to Hunter Prentiss on every possible occasion. A larger-than-lifesize portrait hung against the far mirrored wall, mounted between an elephant head and a tiger pelt, animals the oil man had killed with his very own .458 Winchester Magnum, displayed on a mahogany rack nearby. There was no corresponding portrait of Shane. Annie wondered if sometimes Sheridan’s husband didn’t weary of hearing incessantly about Daddy’s exploits. Of course, in Annie’s view, if Sheridan was not a delight, Shane was certainly no prize. If it wasn’t a marriage made in heaven, it seemed a nice combination of people who probably deserved each other.

As Max and Annie came even with the elephant head, Eugene Ferramond, dignified in his tuxedo, waved a genial hand.

They paused and said hello.

“Pretty nice, this,” Eugene observed.

Annie looked at him sharply. She would have thought Eugene would find this room distasteful in the extreme, but he was nodding serenely at the elephant head. And, my God, if he wasn’t Teddy to the life tonight!

“Big-game hunting is quite a test of a man.”

“Actually, quite a test of the prey, don’t you think?” Max asked.

Annie could have hugged him. It might not be murder to gun down magnificent creatures, but it ranked high on Annie’s sin list.

Eugene was oblivious. He looked admiringly at the mounted gun. “You know, TR was partial to the Winchester. He always used forty-five-caliber bullets of three hundred grains, backed by ninety grains of powder, when he hunted elk. Of course, he made it a rule never to shoot at anything but bucks—unless it was the rutting season.”

“Good,” Annie said dubiously.

“The bucks’ flesh is poor then.”

They edged away, leaving him absorbed by the elephant’s head.

When they reached the crystal oil derrick, their hostess held out her hand and took Annie’s in it. “So glad you both could come,” Sheridan murmured insincerely.

They exchanged smiles, which had all the warmth of a west Texas winter sunrise.

Sheridan’s voice was cool, too, uninfected, with only the faintest hint of her southwest origin. Her accent owed more to her Boston finishing school and her ricochet around the jet-set ports of call—Malibu, Monte Carlo, St. Thomas, Rio, and, now, Broward’s Rock.

The smile scarcely caused a ripple across Sheridan’s face. Her skin was smooth and unblemished, thanks, Annie felt sure, to the very finest of plastic surgeons. Not a single wrinkle splayed out from her amber eyes, even though she must be in her early forties. Was she older than her husband?

Feeling vaguely guilty, Annie increased the wattage of her smile. “Oh, we wouldn’t have missed it for the
world,”
she cried heartily and felt embarrassed when she saw Carla’s quick, sardonic glance as she joined them.

Sheridan looked past Annie at Carla. “Everyone’s raving about the sets, my dear.”

Carla flushed with pleasure and ducked her head.

The contrast between the two women was striking. Carla stood at an awkward angle, her dark hair falling across her face, while Sheridan posed beside the crystal derrick, her body
as clearly on display as a Rubens nude. Most women wouldn’t have dared to stand beside the glittering oil derrick, fearing they would be overshadowed, diminished. Sheridan was not. She dominated the room, and she knew she did so. It was clear in the arrogant lift of her head, the satisfied curve of her scarlet mouth, the blatant play of her dress against the glistening brass ceiling. And tonight, she was clearly in high good humor. She squeezed Carta’s arm, then waved an imperious, diamond-heavy hand, beckoning Sam Haznine nearer.

Sam swerved immediately toward Sheridan. The pudgy director clutched the hand of a girl who couldn’t be a day past nineteen and who sported the spikiest purple-and-pink hair Annie had ever seen. This must be sweetie, she thought, carefully avoiding Max’s twinkling eyes.

Sheridan’s disdainful glance moved from the top of that neon-bright hairdo to the white, out-of-style sandals, just slightly scuffed. Then she looked away, dismissing the girl. She spoke to Sam as if he were alone. “Come tell us what happened today, Sam.”

The girl’s face flushed, and she grabbed at Sam’s elbow. “Let’s go get something to eat,” she said loudly.

Sam gave her a hunted look, but he scuttled directly to Sheridan, the girl trying to hang back.

Sheridan’s lips curved.

Annie had a sudden sharp desire to puncture that envelope of self-satisfaction. What would Sheridan do if Annie loudly announced how Shane had performed behind the backdrop with a randy refugee from the sandbox set? Annie profoundly wished she had been endowed with what Miss Marple so lovingly described as “a wicked tongue.”

Sheridan proceeded to underline her lack of regard for social niceties. Turning her unreadable amber eyes toward Sam, she drawled, a ripple of amusement in her voice, “Here I am with the director and two stars of the opening play. Now’s my chance to find out what happened this afternoon. Shane came home from rehearsal as puffed up as a tomcat in a backyard brawl, and I can’t get a word out of him.”

Sam looked seedy in a dinner jacket that had seen better years. The collar had frayed and the cummerbund wrinkled against his paunchy abdomen. He had approached his hostess
with a smile. Now it stuck to his face like garnish on yesterday’s tea sandwich.

“Nothing much,” he said sourly. “Somebody’s screwy idea of a joke.” But his watery blue eyes were full of dread. He stuttered in his eagerness to deflect Sheridan. “Want you to—to—to meet Tonelda. This is Tonelda Divine—and she’s going to be a great actress.”

The flush was receding from the girl’s face. She puffed her spiky hair and simpered.

Sheridan nodded curtly. “Come on, Sam. What’s it all about?” she persisted. “Shane muttered something about a Shakespeare play.”

Carla moved restively, and almost spoke.

“A superstition. Theater people are chock-full of them,” a robust voice announced at Annie’s elbow. She looked up at Vince Ellis, who had an Irish face and a mop of brilliant red hair. He played Officer Brophy in the play and was also owner and publisher of the
Island Hills Gazette,
the weekly newspaper that served Broward’s Rock. “Has something else happened at the theater?”

Sam made a valiant stab at looking unruffled. “Naw. No big deal. Listen, I meant to tell you what a great Brophy you are, kid.” It wouldn’t have played even in Paducah, and Vince was nobody’s fool. With mounting curiosity he looked at Annie and Max.

Brusque as always, Carla broke the short silence. “Oh, come on, Sam. You can’t keep it quiet.” She turned toward Vince. “Somebody included a quote from
Macbeth
on one of Shane’s prompt cards.”

Vince whistled.

Boredom replaced the avid interest in Sheridan’s eyes. “Is that all?” she drawled. “What’s so bad about that?”

Carla clenched her big hands. “It’s supposed to cause lousy luck if anyone even mentions that play in a theater,” she said gruffly.

Sheridan’s full lips curved in an amused smile. “Oh, that’s really funny.”

“Funny!” Sam’s voice rose sharply, and he hunched his shoulders as if cowering against a blow.

Tonelda yanked at his arm. “Flip her off, Sam. Tell her to go get screwed.”

“Sweetie—” His tone was strangled.

Max hastily intervened. “It’s a deep-seated taboo,” he informed Sheridan, moving between her and Tonelda. “Some people think it started in Shakespeare’s time and had to do with the supernatural elements of the play, that when you invoked the witches it summoned evil spirits who would then injure the players. But some experts believe it was simply because a lot of people took sick playing in
Macbeth
during the Restoration period, and the feeling got out that if you quoted from the play, you could be struck down, that it was very, very bad luck.”

Vince moved closer to Sam. “You know, maybe it’s time to do a story on all this in the
Gazette.”

Galvanized by this new threat, Sam reached out and grabbed Vince’s arm. “Oh, no, buddy, you don’t want to do that. You’re an island booster, right? You want everything to go swell—and that kind of story could scare people away. You want us to have a good season, don’t you?”

“That’s what everybody wants,” a deep voice boomed. “Right, Sheridan?”

Harley Jenkins III, all 295 pounds of him, resplendent in red dinner jacket and green-and-red-checked trousers, clapped a meaty hand on Sheridan’s bare back. The head of Halcyon Development’s thick lips spread in a loose imitation of a smile that wasn’t reflected in his eyes. “Sounds like a bunch of nuts to me. I don’t believe in bad luck. A man makes his own luck.” He pulled Sheridan’s sinuous body close to his, gave her a hug. “Now, here’s the kind of luck any man can enjoy—and I don’t mind telling you it would take a woman like Sheridan to bring me out for this bash.”

Sheridan gave him an enigmatic smile, then gracefully slipped free of his embrace. “It always helps for opposing camps to talk.” She looked earnestly at Sam, who was watching Harley like a rat who’s just spotted a cobra. Annie thought the mantle of civic helpfulness rode uneasily on Sheridan’s smooth, naked shoulders. “I asked everyone to come tonight, hoping we could all work together for the artistic community. It seems such a shame for creative people to be at cross-purposes.”

“Cross-purposes?” Carla’s violet eyes raked Jenkins’s
broad figure. “It’s the same old story, a bully wanting his way.”

Jenkins’s bonhomie evaporated faster than a stack of quarters in Las Vegas. The veins in his mottled face bulged. “And I always get my way, you better remember that.” He turned his back on Carla, once again reaching out to clasp Sheridan’s arm.

Carla started forward and stumbled. Her hand went up and a cup full of purple punch splashed on Jenkins’s back. “Oh, Lord, so sorry. Turned my ankle.”

Annie gasped, Tonelda clapped her hands in pleasure, Max gestured for a waiter to come, and Jenkins whirled toward Carla, his face apopletic.

They made their escape during the mop-up and took refuge near the terrace windows on the lee side of an alabaster statue of Pan that should have been in the Getty Museum. As they looked out on the swirling currents of the party, Max tried to restrain his glee, but found it hard going. “Not that I would wish our friend Jenkins ill,” he said virtuously, “but his spirits did seem dampened.”

“That punch is damn sticky,” Annie observed, wiggling her silver pump, which matched the smoky shade of her silk dress. “I stepped in it.” Across the room, a waiter offered a second wet towel to Jenkins, who shrugged it away, his empurpled face twisted in a furious scowl. Carla was swinging around, head down, evidently on her way out, when Sheridan caught her arm. The hostess patted her guest on the shoulder, nodding warmly. They spoke for a moment more, then Sheridan turned back toward Jenkins.

“That was thoughtful of Sheridan,” Annie forced herself to say. “I suppose Carla’s terribly embarrassed about the whole episode.”

“Embarrassed, hell. Carla did it on purpose,” Max chortled. “She’s a well-coordinated woman, even if she does stride around like an Amazon.” He frowned thoughtfully. “You know, she must think Harley’s behind all the trouble, too.” Then he grinned. “Sure glad we came. You were right. You never know what will happen at the Petree house.” He shaded his eyes, as if peering into desert distances. “I think I see a bar over there somewhere. Since it’s still a sexist world, I’ll go for our drinks,” and he plunged into the crowd.