Feast of Murder(5)

She decided against Desert Pink foundation and picked up the Night Blush instead. She applied a little to her right cheek, squinted at it, and frowned. Then she turned to the pale-faced woman sitting on the ottoman next to her and said: “The problem with all this nonsense about business is that nobody minds their own. I mean, this thing with Donald McAdam. It only happened today. I only heard about it because Calvin came by to talk to me last night—to warn me, he said, and he was right. Everybody knows about it already. Everybody calls me about it. I don’t know what it is they think I’m supposed to do.”

The pale woman on the ottoman was named Lydia Boynton, and as far as Sheila knew, she wasn’t anyone in particular. She was, in fact, a first wife, the daughter of one rich man and the divorced wife of another. In her grass widowhood, Lydia had set up shop as a “social image adviser,” meaning as one of those women who sell their connections to the inner circles of debutante balls and benefit committees to the climbers coming up. Sheila had hired her because she was bored. With Jon away for over a year, getting social seemed to be the only thing left in the universe to do.

Lydia was dressed in a long satin gown that looked exactly like a shirtwaist. Sheila wondered how long it would be before she could fire the woman and go it on her own. As long as it took Jon to get out, she supposed. With Jon back in circulation, Sheila would get invited to everything as a matter of course.

“What makes it all worse,” she went on, abandoning the foundation for the mascara. For a ball this big, she should have hired a makeup artist. They charged $3,000 to do your face, but it was worth it. “What makes it worse,” she repeated, “is that I’m in the middle of all this mess. I mean, Jon’s getting out on the first of October. I have to plan for that. Then there’s this party he wants to throw. Did I tell you about this party he wants to throw?”

“I don’t know,” Lydia said doubtfully. “You told me about Thanksgiving dinner. On his boat.”

“It’s not just a boat,” Sheila said impatiently. She glared at the mascara, looking fake in the hard lights that surrounded her mirror. “It’s an exact replica of the Mayflower. No motor. No bathroom in the ordinary sense. He wants to get the whole family on it—including Fritzie, by the way, and Charlie Shay—and sail it up to Massachusetts someplace and land on this island. I think he may own the island.”

“Isn’t Fritzie his first wife?” Lydia asked. “Could he get her to agree to that? Could he get you to agree to it?”

“He could get us both to agree to anything,” Sheila said. “All those trusts he set up are reversible any time he wants to reverse them. And Fritzie’s got an old family name, but she’s stone broke on her own and she’s much too old for anyone to want to marry her. I mean, she must be forty-five.”

Lydia Boynton coughed.

“Anyway,” Sheila said, “I’m having the headache of my life setting up for Thanksgiving, and then this thing comes along with Donald McAdam. Could you please tell me what I’m supposed to know about Donald McAdam? Except that he’s a crook, of course. That was in all the papers.”

“Well,” Lydia said, “the fact is, he is a crook, but he tattletold on all the other crooks, and the other crooks went to jail and he didn’t. I’m sorry to sound like a kindergarten teacher, dear, but it’s really that simple. The people who have been calling you have probably been—hurt by Mr. McAdam. As you have too, of course.”

“I have? Why?”

“Because it was Donald McAdam who put your husband in prison,” Lydia said. “At least, that’s who I understood it was. Without Mr. McAdam’s testimony, your husband wouldn’t be in jail.”

There were twenty-two shades of eye shadow in the makeup tray at her elbow, six with glitter in them. Sheila passed over the glittery ones and settled on a deep rose, thinking all the time. What Lydia said didn’t sound right, although she couldn’t put her finger on why not. There was something about there not being a trial, and something else about some securities in a safe deposit box—the particulars of Jon’s case always confused her. In the end, he had simply pleaded guilty, or guilty to a lesser charge, and that had been that. She couldn’t remember anything at all about Donald McAdam.

“I still don’t get the point,” she said to Lydia. “So Donald McAdam belongs in jail and he isn’t there. Go complain to the district attorney.”

“Mr. McAdam has immunity,” Lydia said. “There’s nothing you can do about that. And it’s not the same thing as paying him twelve and a half million dollars.”