A Groom With a View (21 page)

Jane and Shelley exchanged astonished looks, but kept quiet.

“Dwayne said when it came closer to the wedding, he knew Thatcher would get desperate enough to up the ante."

“And he didn't?" Smith asked calmly.

“No, not enough. So Dwayne and I talked it over last night and decided he'd better go through with the wedding, and then he could divorce her and get a big settlement out of the family."

“There wasn't a prenuptial agreement?" Gus Ambler snapped. Jane hadn't even noticed him sitting in the far corner of the room until he spoke.

Kitty shook her head. "No, Jack wanted one, but Dwayne refused to sign it. He knew they'd cut him off with nothing if he signed anything. That's why he thought up to the very end that Jack would put a stop to the wedding. Then we were going to take the money and get married right away. We'd had our blood tests and the marriage license and everything.”

She paused. They were all silent in the face of this confession.

“I know it wasn't nice," Kitty said, sniffling again. "But we were so desperately in love and so poor. And Livvy didn't really care anything about him. Jane, you heard her. Just before she went down the stairs, she tried to back out of the wedding and her father wouldn't let her. She didn't love him at all and he didn't care anything about her. He was in love with me. It was the only way we could get married and have a house and children. I know you all must think we were awful, but it was the only thing we could do. We had to.”

She looked around for sympathy or understanding and found nothing but perfectly blank expressions.

“I didn't think Livvy would care," Kitty went on. "She didn't want to marry him. You know that, Jane. You heard her say so. Eden heard it, so did the musicians, I imagine. But Dwayne must have told her sometime during the reception dinner that he wanted a divorce right away and was leaving with me. All that prissy repression must have burst the dam. She was furious at being made a fool of and she killed him. I'm not sure she even meant to, really. I can understand. She was so shocked, so embarrassed, and there was that knife we used to cut the ribbons on the presents and…”

She dissolved in tears again. "And now neither of us can have him. I don't know how I'll live without him. I'd rather she'd have killed me.”

If she expected sympathy, she was disappointed. There was an almost palpable air of disgust in the room.

John Smith looked at Jane. "Would you mind finding Mr. Thatcher and asking him to come in here?”

Jane did as she was asked. Jack Thatcher was still in the main room. "Mr. Thatcher, the police would like to speak to you."

“Well, it's about time!" he snarled.

She followed him back to the side room. He started complaining the moment he passed through the doorway, but John Smith cut him off."Mr. Thatcher, did your daughter and Dwayne Hessling have a prenuptial agreement?"

“What? What difference does that make? Of course they did."

“Could I see it?"

“Good God, man! I'm not carrying the damned thing around with me! It's in the safe deposit box at my bank."

“No!" Kitty exclaimed. "He's lying. Dwayne told me he'd absolutely refused to sign anything."

Thatcher turned to her, looking as if he couldn't quite remember who she was. "What on earth would
you
know about it?" His voice dripped with contemptuous dismissal.

Kitty reeled back as if he'd physically assaulted her.

Mel stepped forward. "Mr. Thatcher, let's go somewhere private and I'll explain it all to you.”

Somehow Mel managed to sweep Shelley and Jane out of the room as well and abandon them the moment the door closed behind them. Thatcher was bellowing that he had the right to know just what the hell was going on and Mel was speaking quietly and leading him up the stairs to the privacy of Thatcher's remote bedroom.

“Can this possibly be true?" Jane said, still stunned.

Shelley headed for the kitchen. "I need coffee. Badly.”

They found the largest cups in the kitchen and filled them to take outside. It was getting dark and something nearby was blooming with a beautiful fragrance. Sitting down on the slight rise where the wedding pictures had been taken a few hours earlier, Shelley finally answered. "If it's true, Kitty and Dwayne are the sleaziest people I've ever known."

“I think I find that easier to accept than you do," Jane admitted. "I haven't liked Kitty since I set eyes on her. But until now, I didn't have any reason to feel that way and felt sort of guilty about having such antipathy for someone I didn't even know."

“I guess if Jack Thatcher can turn up with a prenup contract, that will prove she's lying." Shelley blew across the top of her coffee, trying to get it cool enough to down a big, comforting slug of it.

Jane thought for a moment. "No, not necessarily. It might only prove that Dwayne was lying to Kitty about not signing it."

“Could Dwayne have really and truly had the hots for Kitty?" Shelley asked.

“Sure. Remember Joselyn Wossername? That woman who lived down the block from us years ago?"

“Only vaguely."

“She was downright unattractive," Jane reminded her. "Thin cranky lips, practically no eyebrows, dumpy figure, awful hair. But men were gaga about her."

“But she had a good personality, as I recall.Made them all feel like King of the Mountain. Kitty didn't even have that going for her."

“Still, there's no accounting for other people's taste," Jane said. "If what she's saying is true, they were both such sleazeballs that they're way outside our range of understanding. The whole thing could have been a con job from the very beginning, just like Kitty said. They picked a sheltered, rich, mealymouthed victim who was being pressured to get married and if somebody hadn't bumped Dwayne off, it might have worked.”

Shelley nodded. "You could be right."

“Remember?" Jane said. "We were wondering all along why Jack Thatcher was letting Livvy marry someone so gigolo-ish. Kitty and Dwayne knew they weren't socially acceptable to the likes of the Thatchers. They had every reason to suspect Jack would give Dwayne a bundle to get lost."

“White trash who know they're white trash and make the best use of it?”

Jane took a sip of her coffee. "Something like that. Even we know that sometimes you get what you want by being deliberately obnoxious. I've seen you do it.”

Shelley grinned. "So true. But somehow I just can't accept Kitty's story. I suppose because it's so ugly and coldhearted."

“Yes, it's hard to connect with that kind of thinking, isn't it? But there is some evidence that Kitty's story is true. Just the fact that she put that wedding announcement in the paper is one thing.

Nobody'd do that unless they knew for sure they were actually getting married."

“Didn't work that way in her case, though," Shelley said, flapping her hand at a moth that had taken a liking to her and kept trying to form a relationship with her hair.

“But only because they misjudged how desperate Jack Thatcher was to get some grandsons on the way. But there's more. Look at all the luggage Kitty brought along to the wedding."

“I'd forgotten that. I remember thinking she looked like she had enough stuff along to follow up the wedding with a round-the-world cruise."

“Me, too. I'd bet anything she'd burned her boats and has nearly everything she owns in the suitcases and her car. She
did
intend to marry Dwayne this weekend."

“But was it what Dwayne intended?" Shelley asked, taking another vicious swipe at the moth.

“Apparently so," Jane said, then frowned. "Or maybe not. Possibly he just let her think so. But why would he want her to believe it?"

“Was he double-crossing her?" Shelley wondered. "Maybe he was just stringing her along in case the wedding fell through and he came out of it as broke as ever. No, that won't play.”

Jane shook her head. "I can't get a handle on Dwayne's role in this. Do you suppose he even
liked
either of them?”

Shelley shrugged. "I hardly spoke to him. But he could well have been one of those people who only like themselves. He certainly looked thepart. Maybe he, too, had grand visions of little Dwaynes all over the place and figured Kitty looked like good breeding stock and Livvy could finance him."

“Or maybe he just got in way over his head with the whole scheme and didn't know what to do," Jane said irritably. "There was Kitty on the one hand, who appears to have absolutely worshiped him, which is pretty hard to dismiss even if you don't have an inflated ego. And Livvy on the other hand, who was reluctantly willing to provide him with cash, luxury, and social standing.”

“You're saying he was spineless?"

“Probably. And maybe just too stupid to carry it off. Maybe he really did blurt out something about wanting Kitty instead, and Livvy lost her head. Imagine if you didn't really want to marry the guy to begin with, and then, while you're still in your wedding dress, he hits you with the news that he prefers a drip like Kitty. Add to that how utterly, horribly stiff-upper-lip and repressed Livvy is…"

“Mount St. Helen's. ." Shelley said. "KA-BOOM!”

t wenty-two
·

"I can't stand this moth anymore. Let's go back inside," Shelley said.

As Jane hoisted herself wearily to her feet, she said, "Don't you wonder what she might have in all that luggage?"

“I imagine the police have already thought of that," Shelley said.

“Still, let's just have a little peek.”

They refilled their coffee cups and strolled casually down the long hall to Kitty's room. Jane put her ear to the door and couldn't hear anyone inside. She tapped lightly. No response. Shelley opened the door gingerly. The room was empty.

It appeared that police had already made a cursory, and surprisingly tidy, inspection of Kitty's belongings. Two large suitcases were open on the bed. A briefcase was open on the small table under the window. Jane hadn't seen it before. A big box from Victoria's Secret was open and fullto the brim with exquisite and very sexy underwear. It all looked several sizes too small for Kitty's ample figure.

“She must be pretty good at fooling herself," Shelley said, holding up a lacy size 32 B bra. "She's got to be a thirty-eight C or it's been too long since I bought underwear.”

Jane was preoccupied. "There's something missing."

“What?" Shelley said, dropping the bra back into the box.

“There was another piece of luggage. A smaller case. Brown, I think. I carried it in and noticed that it was pretty light and had something in it that sort of thumped.”

They looked under the bed, in the wardrobe, and in the bathroom. There was no sign of it. "Where could she have put it?" Shelley asked.

“Maybe the thumpy thing was a makeup mirror and she took it up to Mrs. Crossthwait's room, or Livvy's."

“Let's take a look," Jane said.

“What do you think is in it that makes it so important?" Shelley asked.

“I don't know. It's just the fact that it's missing that makes me wonder.”

They left the room and as they went down the hall toward the main room, they passed Kitty. She tried to make a grab at Jane's sleeve, but Jane managed to dodge her grasp with a fair degree of tact. "Jane, you've got to tell them," Kitty said. "They think I killed him. I would never have done that. I'm sure it was Livvy. You have to tell them Livvy tried to get out of the marriage at the last minute."

“I have told them, Kitty. And I'll tell them again, if you want. Now, you should really go rest. It's been a horrible day for everyone."

“They're questioning Livvy now. She'll probably confess," Kitty said. "And this nightmare will be over for some people. Like you. But not for me. Never for me.”

She turned and slouched toward her room, crying again. The seat of her skirt was butt-sprung, her once-crisp suit jacket was wrinkled and lumpy. The heel of one shoe looked crooked, as if it were about to come apart. She was a mess.

Shelley and Jane went to the main room where Eden and Layla had gotten another puzzle out and were silently, doggedly working on it as if solving what the picture was might resolve the whole mess. They weren't speaking. Each had a plate of leftovers and a glass of wine at the side of the table. The cat, who had befriended Jane earlier, was sitting on the third chair, with only his head showing. Any moment now, he'd be tasting one of their dinners.

“We should get some scraps while there are some left," Jane said. "But I want to look for that suitcase first.”

Errol and Marguerite were now occupying the sofa Livvy had been sitting on earlier.

“Livvy's being questioned," Marguerite said."They let her father be with her, but not me. That's wrong. Jack's such an ass. He'll huff and puff and make everything even worse. Have you two heard this absurd story that terrible Kitty person is telling?”

Jane and Shelley nodded, but said nothing.

“It's so stupid! Nobody could have believed it. Dwayne? In love with that box of rocks? Errol, you know that's not true, don't you?”

Errol shook his head. "I don't know. I've never understood Dwayne. I don't know what made him tick."

“You didn't get along with your brother?" Jane asked softly.

“It wasn't a matter of getting along so much," Errol said. "I just always felt he was thinking circles around me. He always had schemes and plans and secret stuff going on. Sometimes he'd tell me about them when we were younger and he'd be so proud of how clever he was. But I never even got what he was talking about. It was like, I dunno, circles inside circles stuff. Real complicated. Trying to second-guess everybody."

“Are you saying this bizarre story Kitty is telling is true?" Marguerite said. "And that Livvy was even remotely inclined to
kill
someone?”

Errol blushed furiously. "No, no! Not at all. I'm just saying it's possible Dwayne was plotting something weird. He usually was. That doesn't make Livvy guilty of anything. She's more like me, I think. She just wants to get along in life, do her job, be happy, and not get into fights with anyone."