“You know, Davee, that this is in very poor taste.”
“Very.” Davee Pettijohn was practically purring with self-satisfaction as she traded her empty highball glass for the full one the roving waiter brought her. “As I told you before, Hammond, I refuse to be a hypocrite.”
“Your late husband’s funeral was only yesterday.”
“God, don’t remind me. What a freaking dismal event that was. Weren’t you just bored out of your gourd?”
In spite of himself Hammond smiled and thanked the waiter for his own made-to-order drink. “They’ll be talking about this for years.”
“That’s the general idea, sweetheart,” Davee said. “This little soiree was meant to offend all the bitches who’ll be gossiping about me no matter what I do. Why not go all out?”
The gathering could hardly be called a little soiree. The lower level rooms of the Pettijohn mansion were teeming with friends, acquaintances, and hangers-on who were too flamboyantly rebellious in their own right to give a fig if the widow threw a party the day following her husband’s funeral or not. There was no way it could be misconstrued as a wake. It was a highly improper, ill-timed bacchanal, which, of course, was the general idea.
“Wouldn’t this make Lute furious? He’d have a stroke.”
“He did,” Hammond remarked.
“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot that.”
“Did he have warning of a pending stroke?”
“Blood pressure readings off the charts.”
“Didn’t he take medication for it?”
“He was supposed to. But it made his dick limp, so he stopped taking it.”
“And you knew that?”
She laughed “What do you think, Hammond? That I caused him to have a stroke? Look, it was his own damn, stubborn fault. He said if it came to a choice between screwing or blowing a gasket, he’d choose blowing a gasket.”
“The stroke didn’t kill him, Davee.”
“No. The bastard was shot. In the back. Here’s to the one who did it.” She raised her glass.
Hammond couldn’t drink to that, and it made him uneasy that she could. He turned his attention back to the party. They were standing on the second-floor gallery, an excellent vantage point from which to watch the merrymaking. “I don’t see any of the Old Guard here.”
“They weren’t invited.” She sipped from her drink, smiling wickedly. “Why spoil their pleasure of speculating on all the sin and iniquity taking place?”
The party would supply the gossips with plenty of material. The rock band’s amps were maxed out. The catered food was ample. Liquor was in even more abundant supply. Drugs were available, too. Earlier Hammond had recognized a well-known dealer who had eluded conviction numerous times.
He spotted a bestselling novelist who’d recently come out of the closet. In celebration of this liberating decision, he was overtly making out with his date for the evening. Their unabashed public display might have drawn attention, except for a stunning young woman nearby who was showing off her newly augmented breasts to a group of avid admirers who were invited to touch and test.
“She paid too much for those,” Davee remarked cattily.
“Do you know a discount boob doctor?”
“No, but I know one who would have done a better job.” Hammond looked at her askance, and she laughed in her throaty, sexy way. “No, darling. Mine are all me. But I’ve slept with him. He’s a lousy lover, but when it comes to his work he’s an absolute perfectionist.”
Hammond gave her a once-over. “Ever since I got here, I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“What?”
“Have you taken up belly dancing?”
“Isn’t it divine?”
Davee spread her arms and executed a pirouette to show off her outfit. Made of red raw silk, it consisted of tight hip-hugger pants and a top cropped just below her breasts. The pants rode dangerously low on her abdomen. Her waist was encircled by a thin gold chain. On each arm she wore at least a dozen gold bangles.
She ended the turn with a nasty bump and grind. Hammond laughed. “Divine.”
Lowering her arms, she frowned at him. “Fat lot of good it does me for you to think so. Hammond, why aren’t we lovers?”
“I’d have to take a number.”
“Fuck you.” He laughed, but her frown only deepened. “How can you say something so mean when I don’t even have a date for my own party?”
“Where’s the masseur?”
“Sandro. I had to let him go.”
“Since Sunday? That was quick.”
“You know how I am once I make up my mind about something.”
“He was rubbing you the wrong way?”
In response to his bad joke, she gave him a sarcastic, “Ha-ha.”
“Sore subject?”
“God, no. He wasn’t a heartthrob, just a crotch throb. His penis is a whole lot bigger than his brain.”
“Every woman’s fantasy man.”
“For a while, maybe. I got bored.”
“And boredom is anathema to you.”
“Positively.” Looking down at the crowd, she sighed. “And I’m there now.” She reached for his hand. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
She drew him down the hallway and into her bedroom. By closing the door, they were granted a blessed reprieve from the music. She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. “Enough of that. I was developing a bitching headache.”
“You can’t abandon your own party, Davee.”
“Only a handful of those people know me. They were just looking for a party and they found one. It doesn’t matter whether or not I mingle. Besides, they’re all on their way to becoming blind drunk.” As she moved across the room, she stepped out of her high-heeled sandals and set her drink on the small table near the chaise. “Want another?”
“No, thanks.”
She took his sweating glass from him and set it down beside hers. What happened next caught him completely by surprise. She reached for his hands and positioned them on her bare waist, then came up on her tiptoes and kissed him, doing another bump and grind against his middle that wasn’t as exaggerated as the first, but even more suggestive.
He reacted with a start, jerking his head up and back. “What are you doing?”
“You have to ask?”
She looped her arms around his neck and tried to kiss him again, but when he didn’t respond, she lowered her heels and gazed up at him with evident disappointment. “No?”
“No, Davee.”
“Just for the hell of it? If you can’t fuck an old friend, who can you fuck?”
“Whom can you fuck.”
She grinned and tried to lock lips again, but he angled his head back.
“We’re not kids any longer, Davee. We’re past the experimental age.”
“It would be good,” she promised seductively. “Much better than the first time.”
“No doubt about that.” He smiled and gave her waist an affectionate squeeze before lowering his hands to his sides. “But I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“I mean I won’t.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she groaned. As she lowered her arms, she dragged her hands down his chest all the way to his belt before letting them fall away from him. “Tell me it isn’t so.”
“What?”
“You’ve fallen for her.”
His heart all but stopped. “How did you find out?”
“Oh, please, Hammond. For months it’s been in the grapevine that you two take your work home with you.”
“Steffi!” he exclaimed on an expulsion of relief. “You’re talking about Steffi.”
Davee cocked her head with perplexity. “Who else could I be talking about?”
Admitting to his affair with Steffi was less harmful than answering her question. “I had a relationship with Steffi, but it’s over.”
“Swear?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“Scout’s honor.”
“Well, I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. Sunday night when you were here, I gave you ample opportunity to talk trash on Ms. Mundell. When you didn’t, I figured the rumors were true. I was floored. I mean, Hammond, where was the appeal? She has no style, no sense of humor, no class, and I’d be willing to bet she doesn’t know any better than to wear white shoes after Labor Day.”
Hammond laughed. “You big phony. You’re not nearly as unconventional as you want everyone to believe.”
She assumed a haughty air. “Some things simply aren’t done.”
“And that white shoes bit is strictly taboo.”
“But you are interested in someone, aren’t you?” she asked suddenly. “And don’t try that ‘who, me?’ face on me, because I know I’m right.”
He neither admitted nor denied it.
Exasperated, she propped her fists on her hips. “I threw this at you,” she said of her shapely body. “I offered you no-strings-attached, mindless boffing, and you turned me down. So either you’ve gone gay, you’re hung up on another woman, or I’ve lost all my sex appeal and might just as well kill myself tonight. Now which is it?”
“Well, I haven’t gone gay, and you haven’t lost all your sex appeal.”
She didn’t make any of the triumphant exclamations she was entitled to. No “I knew it!” No “You can’t fool me, Hammond Cross!” None of that.
Instead she responded to his solemnity, saying quietly, “I thought so. When did you meet her?”
“Recently.”
“A new armpiece? Or is she special?”
Hammond stared at her a moment, debating whether or not to try lying. Before his affair with Steffi, he had dated many women but never stayed with one for long. Around Charleston, he was known as an eligible bachelor with family money and plenty of promise. Scores of single women boldly sought his company. Potential mothers-in-law considered him an excellent catch.
His own mother was constantly arranging introductions to her friends’ daughters and nieces. “She’s a lovely young woman from a wonderful family.” “Her people are from Georgia. They’re into timber. Or maybe it’s tires. Something like that.” “She’s simply a precious girl. I think you two would have a lot in common.” A flip answer would probably convince Davee that this amounted to nothing more than that.
But Davee was his oldest friend, and he was sick of lies and lying. He lowered himself to the edge of the chaise and clasped his hands between his spread knees. His shoulders slumped forward slightly.
“Jesus,” she said as she picked up her drink. “Is it as bad as all that?”
“She’s not an armpiece. About the other, whether or not she could be special, I don’t know.”
“Too soon to tell?”
“Too complicated.”
“She’s married?”
“No.”
“Then why is it complicated?”
“More than complicated. Impossible.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t talk about it, Davee.” He spoke more sharply than he had intended, but his tone must have alerted her to how sensitive the subject was.
In any case, she backed down. “Okay. But if you need a friend…”
“Thanks.” He reached for her hand, pushed back the bangles, and kissed the inside of her wrist. Then, as his finger absently traced the pattern etched into one of the bracelets, he asked, “What gave me away?”
“The way you’re acting.”
He dropped her hand. “How am I acting?”
“Like there’s a line for mandatory castration and you’re next.” She moved to the cart across the room and mixed a fresh drink. “The minute I saw you at the funeral yesterday I knew something was wrong. Career-wise—thanks in part to me—things are going great for you. So I figured you were suffering from a heart problem.”
“It bothers me that I’m so transparent.”
“Relax. Probably no one else has noticed. Besides knowing you so well, I recognize the symptoms. That particular brand of misery can only spell l-o-v-e.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t believe it.”
“Hmm.”
“You never told me.”
“It ended badly. I was just coming off of it that summer we were in the wedding together. A wedding,” she snorted. “Just the environment I needed to make me thoroughly miserable. That’s why I acted like such a royal bitch at all the prenuptial parties. That’s also why I needed a friend that night. A very intimate friend,” she said with a soft smile, which he returned. “Our little escapade in the swimming pool restored my self-confidence.”
“Glad to have been of service.”
“You’re damn right you were.”
Gradually Hammond’s smile receded. “I never would have guessed, Davee. You covered it well. What happened?”
“We met at the university. He was a preacher’s kid. Can you believe it? Me with a preacher’s kid. He was a real gentleman. Smart. Sensitive. Didn’t treat me like a tramp, and, hard as you may find this to believe, I didn’t act like one with him.”
She finished her drink and poured another. “But I had, of course. By the time I met him, I had whored my way across campus, through one dormitory, up one side of fraternity row and down the other. I’d even had a fling with one of my instructors.
“Miraculously he was blissfully unaware of my reputation. Some of my former partners thought it would be a great joke to tell him.” She moved to the window and stared through the louvers of the shutters.
“He was an excellent student. Dean’s list. Very straight. He didn’t party much. For all those reasons, he wasn’t well liked. The guys enjoyed humiliating him, figured it was his comeuppance for being so superior. They didn’t spare a single detail. They even had some pictures from a party where I was one of the favors.
“When he confronted me with all they’d told him, I was devastated that he knew the truth about me. I pleaded with him to forgive me. To try and understand. To believe that I had changed when I met him. But he refused even to listen.” She leaned forward, resting her forehead on the shutter. “That same night, to spite me, he slept with another girl. And she got pregnant.”
She remained so still that even her bracelets didn’t jangle. “From a moral and religious standpoint, abortion was out of the question. Nor would it ever have occurred to him to do other than what was right. So he married the girl. As strange as it may seem, Hammond, that’s when I loved him most. I had so wanted to have his children.”
He waited until he was certain that she was finished, until she moved again, and that was to raise her glass to her lips. “Have you kept track of him?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still married?”
“No.”
“Do you ever see him?”
She turned away from the window and looked at him. “Yesterday. At Lute’s funeral. He was seated near the back with Steffi Mundell. He’s still not very well liked.”
When Hammond pulled all the clues together, his jaw dropped open. Soundlessly his lips formed the name. “Rory Smilow?”
She gave a wry laugh. “There’s no accounting for taste, is there?”
Hammond pushed his hand up through his hair. “No wonder he hated Lute so much. First for his sister. Then you.”
“Well, actually it was the other way around. Lute’s marriage to Margaret didn’t come until years later. I remember when Rory moved to Charleston to accept the job with the police department. I read about it in the newspaper. I wanted to contact him then, but my pride wouldn’t let me.
“The woman he married had died giving birth to their stillborn baby.” She paused to reflect on the irony of that. “His parents were dead, so responsibility for Margaret had fallen on him. He moved her here with him. She got a clerical job in the courthouse. County records, plats, things like that. That’s where she met Lute. It wouldn’t surprise me if the romance developed after she did him a favor, like fudging a property line or something.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, either,” Hammond remarked. “I’ve heard the marriage was a nightmare.”
“Margaret was emotionally fragile. She was certainly no match for a bastard like Lute.” She finished her drink. “On occasion I had got good and tanked, swallowed my pride, and accidentally-on-purpose put myself in Rory’s path. He always looked right through me, as though we’d never known one another. That hurt, Hammond. It also pissed me off.
“So after Margaret’s suicide, I went after Lute and didn’t stop chasing him until he married me. Rory had broken my heart. So I tried to break his by marrying the man he most despised.” She added ruefully, “Revenge has a way of kicking the avenger in the ass, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Davee.”
“Ah, well, don’t be,” she said with a breeziness that Hammond knew was false. “I’ve still got my looks. This,” she said, holding up her highball glass, “didn’t destroy Mama’s beauty. She’s as gorgeous as ever, so I’m counting on good genes to ward off the ill effects of demon alcohol. I’ve got lots of money. As soon as Lute’s will is probated, I’ll have lots more. Speaking of which…”
She walked to an antique desk and opened the slender lap drawer. “This fucking stroll down memory lane almost made me forget. I found this while going through some papers in Lute’s desk. It’s in his handwriting.” She handed him a pale green Post-It note. “That’s last Saturday’s date, isn’t it?”
Hammond’s vision blurred around the notation.
“Lute wrote down your name and a five o’clock time. Looks to me like an appointment. Which I’m sure you would rather no one knew about.”
He looked across at her. “It’s not what you think.”
She laughed. “Hammond, honey, I’d sooner believe in cellulite-reducing creams than I would believe you capable of committing murder. I don’t know what it signifies and don’t want to know. I just thought you should have it.”
He stared at the second notation on the small square of paper. “He wrote down another time. Six o’clock. No name. Any ideas?”
“None. There’s nothing on his official day planner about any appointments on Saturday, with you or anyone else.”
Obviously Lute had intended to meet with someone else that afternoon, following his appointment with him. Who? he wondered. Thoughtfully, he folded the small piece of paper and put it in his pocket. “Rightfully, you should have given this to Smilow.”
“When have you ever known me to do the right thing?” Her mischievous smile turned wistful. “I learned the hard way that it’s a waste of time to try and hurt Rory. I don’t believe he can be hurt.” Then her smile disappeared altogether. “But I don’t feel compelled to do him any favors, either.”