Death on the Mississippi (2 page)

Outside of reaching for the thirty-eight police special clamped to the inside of the desk well and shooting his Majority Leader, there was only one course of action. It was pipe-tamping time. He reached for the tobacco humidor and began to methodically stuff his pipe with fresh mixture. He tamped the bowl gently with a sterling silver pestle and peered thoughtfully through horn-rims at Bea Wentworth. The Governor was not particularly fond of pipes, he preferred Cuban cigars, and his eyesight was perfect; but both props added to the thoughtful image he had cultivated over the years. The methodical and plodding routine was working. Bea was on the edge of her seat, her body tense as she leaned toward him.

“Tell me, Senator, do you really think it is appropriate to tack a children's day-care–center amendment to our general revenue bill?”

“You want budget approval and I want day care,” Bea said. “That's the way it's going to be.”

“The opposition just might blow us out of the water on this one, Senator,” the Governor said mildly. He was proud of his self-control. It had taken years to curb his natural inclination to pound desks.

“I think I have most of the votes necessary, and it's so close to the end of the session that I can use some Senators' natural impatience as leverage.” She stood at his desk with both hands curled over its edge. “With your help, we can pull this off, Governor.”

“Without your costly amendment we would have a cozy surplus that we could use in other ways.” Day care for welfare mothers amounted to zilch votes, he thought to himself. A cut in the capital-gains tax would bring in big bucks at the next campaign-contribution solicitation. If only he could find some old-fashioned dirt on this broad he might be able to control his Majority Leader. It wasn't from lack of trying. Last year he'd sent two members of his “confidential team” to Murphysville, where Wentworth lived. They had been instructed to dig around in the Senator's life and also look into the background of that nerd husband of hers. They had discovered zip, and after a couple of days the local police chief got on their case and threw them out of town.

It was pipe-lighting time, and that always took awhile. As the Governor worked on an even light, he observed the woman sitting across from him. Bea was not a large woman, but her compact figure was too full for her to be called petite. Her close-cropped, light hair often gave her a gamine-like appearance, an impression that could be quickly dispelled by watching her darting, intelligent eyes and an intense manner that revealed itself when she was concerned. She was concerned now.

Didn't this woman ever get drunk and do dumb things? Didn't she ever play around? Maybe her husband liked boys, that used to be good for a little political extortion.

He glanced at the blinking light on his call director and impatiently snatched the phone. “What?” He reluctantly handed the phone to Bea. “It's your office.”

“Your husband called and said it was important for you to know that Dalton has arrived,” the efficient voice said.

For a few moments the Governor of the State of Connecticut thought he had found deliverance. His Senate Majority Leader had turned pale, the hand clasping the phone shook, and she sat limply in the chair. She gave every appearance of having just suffered a minor stroke.

Bea shucked off a light suit jacket and threw her key ring on the hall table. She sighed. It had not been one of her better days. “I'm home!”

“Out on the patio,” Lyon answered.

The soothing ambiance of Nutmeg Hill embraced and rejuvenated her as she walked past Lyon's study to the living room. They had discovered the two-hundred-year-old house with its gambrel roof and widow's walk on a long-ago Sunday hike. Boarded up and half hidden by plant growth, they had sensed that once it was refurbished the house on its spectacular perch on a promontory above the Connecticut River would fulfill all their expectations. It had taken years of hard work, but now that it was completed, their dream had come to fruition.

Her restored mood shattered when she saw the coffin in the living room.

She wouldn't ask. It wasn't necessary to know details now that Dalton Turman was back in town.

She mixed a martini for herself and poured a pony of Dry Sack sherry for Lyon at the bar cart and took the drinks out on the patio. Next to the parapet wall, Lyon was adjusting the tripod of his telescope. “Are we bird watching or is Debbi Wilcox skinny dipping off her dock again?” she asked as she put his sherry down on the wall.

Lyon shook his head as he glanced through the eyepiece. “You've got to see Dalton's latest acquisition.”

“I will not look at his newest toy,” Bea said. “I will not even acknowledge his existence.”

Lyon made a minute adjustment to the telescope's lens. “I've never seen anything like this. Dalton had it designed and built to his own specifications, and he plans to sail it down the Inland Waterway to Florida.”

“I refuse to look,” Bea said. “You know, of course, that a practical joker of modest means is limited to exploding cigars and whoopee cushions. A rich practical joker is a menace to humanity, in the same category as depletion of the ozone layer and the sales tax.”

“I take it we had a bad day in the Senate?”

“It wasn't exactly the ides of March, but if this state had a Tower of London, our commander in chief would have me billeted there.”

“I knew you were going to have trouble with that rider to the revenue bill.”

“I expected objections from fearless leader, and I think I can handle it. But, one thing I can not cope with tonight is making dinner for that man.”

“And his new wife.”

“The poor girl. The possible events on their wedding night boggles the mind.”

Lyon laughed. “Dalton expected that reaction, so it's his treat. The caterers arrive at six, a few guests at seven. Come on now, take a look at this thing.”

“I guess I'll have to.” She bent over to peer through the telescope as Lyon went for fresh drinks.

The houseboat was temporarily berthed at a rickety wooden pier in a wooded cove on the far side of the Connecticut River. She estimated it to be seventy or eighty feet in length with rectangular lines. There was a ladder and swimming platform at the stern, a canopied rear deck, a main saloon with many windows, and a large foreward area for staterooms. The bow's slight curve gave the craft its only semblance of streamlining. A tall superstructure contained a wide pilot house and high mast that bristled with various types of radio dishes and antennas. Mahogany and teakwood rails with brass fittings shined in the dying sunlight.

She sensed Lyon back at her side. “It looks like Tara on pontoons.”

“He never does anything halfway.”

“If this telescope were attached to a cannon I could blow it out of the water.”

“Such sentiments from the state's leading proponent of strict gun-control legislation?”

“That's rifles and handguns. I'm talking howitzers and missiles.”

“Did you notice the boat's name? The
Mississippi
.”

“Bring your drink and talk to me while I shower.”

Bea let the multiple shower sprays tingle her body with water as warm as she could tolerate. She turned slowly from right to left as the water massaged away the day's tension. She had left the translucent shower door cracked and could see half of Lyon through the opening.

“You know, Wentworth,” she said over the sound of running water. “I'm going to have the state librarian research the last witch burning we had in the town of Murphysville.”

“Don't be sexist. It was a warlock in sixteen forty-five.”

“It's my thought that it wasn't a witch … warlock at all, but some guy who pulled a massive trick on the town that made them all so mad that they did him in. The burning stake was probably too good for him.”

“You're too hard on Dalton, hon. I don't think I ever told you this, but he saved my life in combat.”

Bea sighed.

“I was ordered by the regimental commander to occupy an FO position in front of our lines,” Lyon continued. “The gooks had evidently infiltrated a mortar team to my right.”

“Damn it, Lyon! Don't say gooks.”

“The enemy aggressors, then. Anyway, I was observing a suspicious wooded draw to my front when all hell broke loose.”

“Trapped, unable to break free, I was going to be overrun,” Bea mumbled as she turned her face directly up toward the overhead spray.

“Trapped, unable to break free, I was going to be overrun,” Lyon said.

“At great personal risk, Lieutenant Turman and a squad of men fought their way to my position,” Bea said softly.

“Putting his life in jeopardy, Lieutenant Turman and a few guys fought their way to me,” Lyon said.

“We've been married too long,” Bea yelled at him.

The shower door opened as Lyon stepped inside. Somehow, during his war story he had undressed. He began to knead the tense muscles in Bea's neck. “We haven't been married that long,” he said.

“I love late-afternoon matinees,” Bea said as she turned to press against him.

2

André, the caterer, wore tight dress pants, a black turtleneck sweater, and should have carried a swagger stick. He directed his staff with expansive, nearly soundless commands, and obviously expected immediate obedience and efficiency. He barely paused before the coffin as he closed the lid and nodded for a tablecloth to be spread across its top.

“I assume we serve the buffet from here?” he asked Lyon with a wave at the casket.

“Oh, yes,” Lyon replied. “It's only used during daylight hours.”

André gave a barely perceptible shrug and continued his supervision of the preparations on the patio.

“This proves that we've been going to the wrong parties for years,” Bea said.

“I don't think it would have bothered André if the casket held Quasimodo clutching a gargoyle.” For a few moments they silently observed the preparations. “And to think that we thought cold cuts and a loaf of rye bread constituted a buffet,” Lyon observed.

“How gauche we've been,” Bea said as she sniffed the aroma of Persian chicken as it was delicately removed from warming containers and placed in silver chafing dishes. The other courses were of equal quality: iced melon, steamed white rice, vegetables en brochette, and peaches sultana. She could not tell if the wide bottles of Meursault nestling in their wine buckets were medium-priced or expensive. She doubted they were a bad year.

They went out onto the patio as André lit the Japanese lanterns that had been strung along the parapet. A formal bar, manned by a white-jacketed waiter, had been erected near the far wall.

Guests swirled into the house cloaked in an envelope of laughter. They seeped into the living room and spilled out the French doors to the patio. One intense couple invaded Lyon's study where they held an intimate conversation that immediately ceased whenever anyone approached.

Lyon realized that outside of Bea and Dalton, the only person he recognized was his friend, the police chief, Rocco Herbert.

An admiring entourage surrounded Dalton as he completed a story. “His face! God, you should have seen Wentworth's face when I winked at him from my funeral bier.”

“You're incorrigible,” someone in the entourage said.

“Of course I am,” Dalton said as he grasped Bea and pulled her into his arms for a hearty buss. “Madam Senator.”

Dalton smiled at her. He had a wide, crooked smile that seemed to wander over his elongated face. He was an extremely tall man with pinched facial features that were dominated by a longish nose and deep-set eyes that appeared slightly too small for his large head. His body was rangy and gave his physical movements a sectionalized appearance as he walked.

He lifted Bea by the waist and set her on the parapet wall. “Ladies and gentlemen, our hostess. Beatrice Wentworth, Senator of all she surveys. When I came to build in Connecticut, I looked up my old army buddy, Lyon, and asked for his political recommendation because every developer needs a foot in the state house, right! Well, Old Lyon told me about this politician that he was in bed with, and what's good enough for Lyon is good enough for me. Bea is not only pretty, but she doesn't come cheap. She costs me a bundle, but I believe in the best legislators money can buy.”

Rocco Herbert lounged against the French doors that led to the patio. Lyon handed the police chief a brandy snifter of pepper vodka. The gargantuan police officer scowled at Dalton. “Someone is going to kill that guy one day.”

“I have it on good authority that it takes a silver bullet.”

“How can you allow him to ridicule Bea that way?”

“No one takes what he says seriously.”

“You're going to regret that loyalty someday, Lyon. That little favor he did for you in Asia was years ago, and that was what he was supposed to do anyway, goddamn it!”

“I'm here tonight because of him.”

Dalton stood on a chair and swiveled one of the yard spotlights until its beam bracketed Lyon. “And over there,” he said to the crowd from his perch on the chair, “is our cohost, famed porno writer, Lyon Wentworth.”

Lyon laughed and Rocco growled into his brandy snifter. “I write children's books,” Lyon yelled back at Dalton.

“Do you hear that, folks? He makes up kiddie porn, the real dregs. What a great guy!”

The party continued. Some guests wandered into the living room to sample the buffet, while others, the serious drinkers, seemed tethered to locations near the patio bar. Babel and noise overwhelmed Lyon until he was unable to differentiate individual sentences, phrases, or even words. Each voice seemed to speak in at least one register above normal, and it all merged into a sea of cacophony. He tuned out.

Rocco found him in the darkest corner of the patio wedged into a corner where the parapet met the house wall. “Are you blotto or hiding?”