“I don’t think I’ve ever seen either of them in the movies. I don’t even remember the case, although I was alive at the time. I think I was five.”
“The case was absolutely huge,” Bennis said, “and it was crazy even if nothing else was. I mean, Lilith Brayne was ground up by a hacksaw or something—”
“She fell into an irrigation sluice and was battered by the steel wire grate,” Gregor corrected mildly. “Why do you do things like this? You always make the gore more gory than it was.”
“It was pretty gory, Gregor. There was an article about it a couple of years ago in Life, one of those retrospective things. It said that not much was left of her but her face.”
“They were probably exaggerating,” Gregor said.
“And then the two of them that were left ran off to that island, and they’ve never come out and rejoined the world. Don’t you think that’s lunatic enough? Tasheba Kent was all washed up, but Cavender Marsh still had a pretty important career going. And he just walked right away from it.”
“I doubt if there would have been much of it remaining when the scandal died down,” Gregor said. “There’s only so much you can get away with, even if you’re a Hollywood actor. Wasn’t there a child involved?”
“They ditched her on a relative. She was three months old, and Cavender Marsh never saw her again. She’s supposed to be out at the island this weekend.”
Gregor frowned. “That’s not a very good idea. This will be the first time she’s seen her father since all that happened in 1938?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe they’ve been corresponding,” Gregor said, “or talking on the phone.”
Bennis shook her head. “There’s been nothing like that at all. I asked my brother Christopher about it. He always knows everything about everybody we’re connected to. He says Cavender Marsh has never said so much as a single word to his daughter in all this time, never even sent her a birthday card or a Christmas present, and it wasn’t his idea for her to come to the birthday party, either. His lawyer insisted. It has something to do with selling their things at auction, just like having me there does. The lawyer insists on having a representative of the heirs on each side of the family there to oversee what goes into the sale. Although why any of us on our side are supposed to care is beyond me. You know how the Main Line feels about Hollywood. After Cavender Marsh became an actor, my grandmother wouldn’t have him in the house.”
“I wish your brother Christopher could have taken your place on this weekend. Then I wouldn’t have had to come up myself. Eat your fruit salad, Bennis. I want us to get started in plenty of time. I don’t want us to be late for that boat.”
“We won’t be late.”
“I would like to arrive on time without having had you drive me at your usual pace. And drink coffee. I want to make sure you’re awake.”
Bennis got out another cigarette and lit up instead. “Really, Gregor,” she said. “You’re such an old fuddy-duddy about cars.”
4
Gregor didn’t know if he was an old fuddy-duddy about cars. He did know that in a sane world, compassionate laws would have prevented a woman like Bennis Hannaford from buying a car that was described as “a true 140.” “A true 140,” Bennis had explained to him, was a car that ran best at 140 miles an hour. Driving it more slowly was possible, but not very good for the engine. Gregor didn’t think Bennis had ever driven him at 140 miles an hour. If she had, he must have passed out cold and forgotten all about it. But she did drive him fast enough to turn his stomach into a mass of knots and make his head feel stuffed full of cotton wool.
“There’s no point in driving as fast as you do,” Gregor told Bennis, over and over again. “You barely save five minutes of time on any one trip, and you’re spending a fortune on speeding tickets.”
“Five minutes is a lot of time,” Bennis replied solemnly. “Five minutes here and five minutes there. It can really add up.”
“What it’s going to add up to is your losing your license. And I’m not going to blame the state of Pennsylvania one bit.”
Gregor wouldn’t have blamed the state of Massachusetts if it had impounded Bennis’s car and forced her to go on foot. He had heard his share of jokes about Boston drivers, but he didn’t think even Boston had ever been able to handle Bennis Hannaford.
“That was a speed bump we just bounced over,” Gregor pointed out, as they came tearing out of the parking garage. “It was supposed to slow you up.”