Further Lane (32 page)

“Oh, hi, Beecher. I didn't think you played tennis.”

“Not much, Pam. Came over to see you.”

“So you've sniffed out my guilty secret?”

“What?”

“I'm as bad as the late but unlamented Hannah, playing against the ball-tossing machine. The Club's SAM, adjusting the speed so I can't just whack it back routinely every time. I like to be tested. So I go for that Steffi Graf hundred-and-five-mile-an-hour first serve. Even at my age, I like a nice hard ball.”

“That's a laugh, at ‘your age.' Come on.”

“Very gallant, Beech. Thanks. But calendars don't lie.”

I was fencing, offering a small compliment rather than telling her why I was here. I wished now I'd waited for Alix. It would be easier to start talking. Not about her tennis but whether she'd killed two people. I was a reporter accustomed to asking questions and trying to get answers. But I'd never asked a question anything close to that direct, not even of a stranger. Never mind the rich neighbor who lived down the lane …

“Well…” she said, mopping her face and forearms with a crisp white towel pulled from her smart-looking nylon tote bag, smiling easily at me as if to say, yes, I know it's indulgent of me, but I do sweat. And now, Beecher Stowe, why are you here to see me?

“Are you up to speed on the contradictory ‘confessions' by Royal Warrender and Claire Cutting?”

“Only that I heard about it on the car radio and the police don't seem to be taking them seriously. Why?”

“Because the cops don't believe either is the killer. Because it leaves us still asking, then who is?”

“And?” she said, as always, very cool.

“And that brings us to you.”

“Me?
Me?
Are you serious, Beecher? This isn't at all amusing.”

“Not meant to be,” I said, deciding to plunge right ahead. Too late now to fret about injured feelings or never again being invited to the annual garden party. I told her that everyone knew she despised Hannah. No argument about that she said, not coolly anymore but decidedly icy. And now we know you were involved with Leo Brass. How do you know that? she demanded. It's all the talk of Boaters, I said, figuring that was vague enough to protect the gossipy waitress from retribution. And insulting enough to get under her hide. It did.

“Me, the talk of Boaters? What would they know about people from Further Lane at a place like Boaters?”

“That you and Leo first came together on some environmental issue. And it heated up from there. So much so that Hannah Cutting heard the talk. Started riding you. Sniggering up her sleeve about Pam Phythian the Ice Queen and Brass the Bayman. Hinted, or at least suggested, maybe even told you outright it was going into her precious book. She threatened to turn you into a local laughingstock. Tell everyone all about your love affair with a common redneck like…”

Pam erupted now, slinging her tennis racquet at me so accurately that if I hadn't ducked …

“You bastard! What do you know of men like Leo? We had things in common you couldn't possibly even imagine. Hannah wasn't our sort at all. Never was. For her to threaten me was so pathetic. A cheap little social climber from Polish Town. Leo saw right through her. They had a fling once, you know. He slept with her, he slept with her daughter. It was delicious, really, the way he played with them. Then I came along. Leo understood the difference. He was a cut above the usual roughneck Bonacker, the kind of man who could go on, win elections, go to Washington. He and I…”

Pam was really chewing the scenery now. Real Bette Davis stuff. Just what I wanted. Get her sore, get her talking. Now I needed backup. Moral support. Where the hell was Her Ladyship?

“Then why kill Leo, why bump off a future senator?” I asked. She made a vaguely dismissive gesture with one of those capable pale hands. So I tried to answer for her, hoping again to goad her into an explosion.

“I think it must have been because he went back to Claire. He'd had his fun with you, the great lady falling for the redneck Bayman, and he thought he could do even better. Now that Hannah was dead, not there dominating her daughter and whomever she married, Leo was looking at Claire a lot differently. Claire wasn't only rich; she was suddenly a lot more attractive. Leo was a maverick and the idea of Hannah playing mother-in-law-from-hell didn't appeal one bit. But now Hannah was out of the way. You'd done Leo a big favor, Pam. You'd cleared the way for a much younger woman to take him away from you, twenty years younger, and one about to become even richer than you. You couldn't accept that. There was something else. When Hannah was killed Leo knew he didn't do it and neither did Claire. Because they were in bed making love at the time. Nor was he sure you did it but he had his suspicions. That's motivation enough, even without the jealousy factor. He was starting to consider going to the police. Or you feared he might. He'd dumped you for a rich, sexy young girl and now he might finger you as a murderer. People kill for a lot less. And when the hurricane came it gave you the opportunity. You knew Leo's passion for the wetlands and all that, knew he'd absolutely have to go down to check The Gut. Great ecological minds work in the same way.”

She tossed her head in irritation. “If you're all that bright, why bother killing people with bits of privet hedge? Aren't there subtler ways? Aren't I a pretty fair shot?”

“You and Hannah were forever bickering over the privet. Using a privet stake through her black heart may have seemed to you bleak poetic justice.”

She was as truly calm as I was only pretending to be. I even got a smile.

“My, we are clever, Beecher. You'd think you were your father. The Admiral would be so proud the way you put two and three together and get six. You don't add, you multiply. There's privet hedge anywhere you look out here. I've no monopoly on the stuff. Privet is to East Hampton what the pine is to Maine. The redwood to California. Yet you come up with these astonishing conclusions.”

Here was where I started tap-dancing:

“I've been up to your place, broke into one of the greenhouses, stole your gardening gloves. They bore the same combination of soot and privet hedge the crime lab found in the wounds that killed them both, Hannah and Leo Brass.”

Her face started to fall apart then. But only for an instant. The old WASP grace under pressure came through. Until, as we both heard a car, she wheeled. It sounded like Alix's Jag. I turned toward the parking lot trying to see if it were. A mistake. When I turned back Pam had her tote bag in one hand and a small but impressive-looking handgun in the other. With what seemed a professional silencer over the muzzle. That Pam, she thought of everything, didn't she?

“Just shut up and stand where you are, Beecher.”

“Sure, Pam. No problem.” It wouldn't be very smart of her to start shooting people in broad daylight on the grounds of the Maidstone Club but you never knew. She'd killed two people already and had nothing to lose. A weekday morning out of season with nobody around. And with a silencer, to boot. She sounded cool and controlled but why take a chance? People got jittery and started shooting. It happened. I'd been shot in the ass once and didn't want any more of it. Then Alix strode onto the court, seeing both of us but not yet seeing the gun. To Alix it was simply a couple of members having a clubby little chat.

“Hi, there, Pamela. Playing a match? Jolly good to see you. Sorry I' m late, Beecher. The door Mr. Warrender told us was supposed to be open was locked and I had to—Is
that
a gun, Ms. Phythian?”

“How observant. Yes, and I'd like you over on this side of the net as well, please. I'll be leaving shortly in my car and I'd prefer you didn't attempt to impede me.”

“Not at all,” I said, trying to make it sound as if that were the furthest thing from my mind. As it pretty much was.

Not Alix's, however.

“So it was you that bumped everyone off, I take it? Crumbs, that's a stunner. Not even John le Carré could possibly have…”

What the hell was Alix up to? Instead of coming around the net to our side as Pam ordered, she drifted across the baseline. She had something in mind. Just what, I hadn't a clue. But I started talking again, trying to get Pam refocused on me rather man on Alix.

“Clever of you to have known precisely where Leo would be once the storm came ashore. Took someone versed in local topography to know about The Gut and how crucial it is to the ecology of Georgica Pond.”

Alix was still moving, a fixed smile on her face. What the hell was she…? Then she said, her voice very steady, “Beecher, how did you get the goods on her, so to speak?”

“The gloves. Her gardening gloves.”

“My word, just think of it.…”

Pam's voice, hard and angry, cut across our silly dialogue like the crack of a whip. “Enough! There isn't a functioning brain between the two of you. How you stumbled across my path is just sheer rotten luck. I…”

Did I see a warning light blinking on? Or was I …

“Don't you dare…” Pam started.

From somewhere behind me there was a loud bang of sorts and there whizzed past my ear a blur of yellow moving very very fast.
Pock!
Then the same succession of sounds.
Pock-pock!
Facing me, Pam started to dodge, raising the gun menacingly, and then, as a yellow tennis ball smashed into her chest, she staggered and fell.

Game, set, and match, Alix Dunraven.

*   *   *

I used the old length of climbing rope from Hannah's “junk” collection to bind her hands. Then I released tension on the net of the teaching court and had Pam Phythian snugly rolled up like a rug long before the cops arrived and even before she was fully recovered from the thud of that ninety-mile-an-hour serve.

“Fortunate thing she didn't have the machine set to toss up a lob,” Alix commented thoughtfully.

Pam, considering her situation, was remarkably composed. Most of her venom was reserved for the late Hannah Cutting.

“I told you she wasn't our sort, not our sort at all. The very idea of her attempting to climb Everest. On the way up from Katmandu she was forever on the cell phone to the gossip columns, posing for photos with the grinning Sherpas, and shaving her legs. To think that a woman so common might one day stand atop a summit where Hillary and Tenzing once…”

“And where you yourself also stood, Ms. Phythian,” Alix threw in.

“Quite so,” Pam Phythian said, pleased at the notion.

THIRTY-FIVE

Ang Thwat spun out into space and fell into eternity …

With Pam at our mercy, I decided to explain why I suspected something had happened three years ago on Everest between Hannah and her that would eventually lead Pam Phythian to violence.

“You were a suspect, I suppose most of us were, no matter how marginally. But when I checked back issues of the
East Hampton Star
I realized it was only a month or so after you returned from that tragic business atop Everest that Hannah was put up for membership in the Ladies' Village Improvement Society and you pulled rank and forced a vote you knew would end by rejecting her. But why? A relatively unimportant matter but you risked embarrassment to kill her chances. Obviously, a few weeks after you both came home, the differences between you had become deadly, far beyond trimming the privet hedge and backing rival charities. It was Everest, wasn't it?”

She just stared at me. Furious and stubborn, sure she could dominate, quite certain I was only making wild guesses.

Very quietly, I said, “The rope, Pam. That length of climbing rope Hannah brought back from Everest. That was it, wasn't it?”

She started to talk then, compulsively. The police had been called and were on the way and I suppose I should have tried to stop her, to have warned Pam against self-incrimination, but I wasn't a policeman or the D.A.; I was certainly no lawyer. And despite being wrapped in tennis netting, she was in no mood to be shut up and seemed in a curious way to be at the center of our attention.

“The traditional approach to Everest is an overland trek of seventy miles or so from Katmandu to the Thyangboche monastery,” she began. “It can take two or even three weeks; the porters carry such heavy loads and the country is so rough. May seem like a waste of time, but it works out well, permitting the climbers to acclimate gradually to higher and higher altitudes, helps them put a fine edge on fitness. A mountain like Everest demands more than Tuesdays and Thursdays on the Stairmaster. But our expedition was anything but traditional, half of us high-powered women, ‘a dirty half-dozen,' so we laughingly termed ourselves, all of us savvy dames accustomed to having our egos massaged, having our way. So the decision was made to save three weeks and airlift by chopper directly from Katmandu to the monastery base camp and start out from there. I objected, so did a few others. Hannah and the majority would have none of it. She was incredibly eager to push on. She'd cut a deal with one of the TV networks and wanted to get on with the videotaping and the climb and get her adventures on the air. It was sure to sell more books, more magazines, more everything, more … Hannah. So we began our trek without the usual preconditioning and with predictable results, pulled muscles, hammies, sprains. On the approach march most of us wore sensible khaki shorts; Hannah sported a miniskirt and kept asking someone or other to shoot photos and videotape of her on the march. She shaved her legs every morning before we broke camp and drove everyone nuts, forever on the cell phone, talking to people in New York and dictating to secretaries back there. A porter broke his leg fording a mountain stream and you could see Hannah looking impatiently at her Cartier tank watch, wondering just how long this latest crisis was going to delay things. A man writhing in agony and she's looking at her watch.