First Lady (9 page)

“Good.” As he opened a can of Coke, he shook his head mournfully. “If I'd been Peggy Savile, you'd have gone to the public schools like the rest of us, and not in a Triumph convertible either. Want some pizza?”

“In eleven years, have I ever eaten your pizza?” I poured myself a beer.

“See, spoiled.” He added, “Probably Cleopatra wiped off those door knobs herself.”

Cleopatra Skelton was the name of Cuddy's elderly and increasingly narcoleptic cleaning lady. Age
had
withered this Cleopatra, subjecting her to nearly as many infirmities as Martha Mitchell. She and the poodle appeared to spend most of their time napping together in front of Cuddy's fifty-five-inch television and I suspected they would go on doing so until they passed away, for Cuddy would never get rid of either. He was always rushing one or the other of them to a clinic for emergency medical treatment.

I was obliged to point out that Cleopatra didn't appear to have wiped off the kitchen counter, much less the door knobs. Saying so, I ran my hand over his stove top, which was splattered with tomato sauce.

“I spilled that this evening,” he claimed. He always defended her. “I don't see why you're not crazy about Cleopatra. She's
old
.”

“I do like her, she just didn't wipe these door knobs.”

“She's having a rough time. Her husband's in the hospital with diabetes.”

“I'm sorry to hear it. Look, somebody waltzed into your house and slapped that star on your sliders. Somebody put a tape in my car.”

“It's Brenda. Last week she Saran-wrapped the men's toilet bowls.”

“You think Brenda Moore sent you a
Star
clipping calling for your resignation? No way. I'm going to have that red magic marker checked.”

He snorted. “What's the possible point of Guess Who's sticking a star up in front of my telescope?”

“He's saying, ‘Hey, Big Star, look at what's right under your nose.'”

Cuddy was now scrubbing at his stovetop to preserve Cleopatra Skelton's reputation. “What's right under my nose besides you?”

Suddenly, the doorbell rang with a manic impatience so shrill that even Martha heard it and raced angrily barking at the noise, driven by outrage beyond the pain of rheumatism; as I opened the door, she lunged at Bubba Percy's tuxedo leg. But Bubba was already so upset he didn't even react. Still sallow faced, he now looked disarrayed as well, his bright-green flowered vest unbuttoned, his wavy auburn hair flattened with sweat and tangled on his forehead, a sight I don't think I'd ever seen, for Randolph Prewitt Percy would stop to comb his hair even in the middle of our basketball games. “What are you doing here?” he brusquely asked me as he pushed past.

“No, that's my line. Your line is, ‘I'm sorry to bother you at…” I looked at my watch. “At one-fifteen in the morning but…But?'” I stopped him with a hand on his ruffled shirt; it was damp with perspiration, although the night was almost chilly after the early evening rain.

The press secretary's voice was hoarse. “Cuddy? I gotta talk to you.”

Cuddy walked quickly from behind the kitchen counter. He'd known Bubba a long time. “What's wrong?”

I said, “Is this about the Brooksides?” The truth is, I wondered if Lee was going public with a decision to leave Andy, if that's what all the whispering and sudden departure had been about, if she and Andy had had a sudden break-up. If so, there went the election.

Reaching for my beer, Bubba took a long gulping swallow. “I've got a big problem. I need help.”

Cuddy stared at him. “What problem?”

Bubba sat down on the couch, pulled off his chartreuse tie, and threw it on the coffee table. “I'm putting my nuts in your hand here.”

Cuddy snorted. “That's the kind of help I'm just not prepared to give, pretty as you are, Bubba.”

He ignored the crack. “You know the rock star? Mavis Mahar?”

Cuddy walked around the big glass coffee table to face him. “Yeah? I heard she didn't show tonight at Haver. You know what happened to her?”

Bubba looked up, rolled the can of beer across his forehead. “She's dead.”

I'd seen Mavis Mahar in person for less than an hour of my life, yet I felt loss sweep over me so strongly that I had to sit down. I reminded myself that thousands who'd never seen her at all would, at the report of her death, mourn as if they'd lost a loved one. And I suppose they had. On television tomorrow, there'd be an orgy of bereavement. When stars die suddenly it's as if they give us our chance to grieve over Death itself, at how fast it can come and come too soon, at how much it can rob us of grace. I saw the Irish singer leaping perfectly through the morning mist into lake water. I heard her voice flying toward me like a bird of paradise.

“I don't understand why nobody called me about this!” Cuddy was griping to Bubba. “Car accident?”

The big redhead laughed without humor. “Accident would have been better.”

Cuddy, flipping channels on his muted television, wasn't much interested. “Overdose?”

Bubba rubbed the cool beer can against his forehead. “Shot herself. In the head.”

His words brought me to my feet. “Mavis Mahar? I don't believe it. Bubba, is this a sick joke?”

“Right, Justin, I made it up for fun.”

“How do you know?” He just stared at me until I went over and shook him by the shoulder. “How do you know!”

Cuddy turned from the news, fixing hard blue eyes on the press secretary. “Talk to us, Bubba. Why is this
your
problem?”

When Bubba looked up—his long lashes wet, the smug irony usually in the corner of his mouth wiped away—two things came clear. One, he'd seen her dead body. No secondhand report could have shaken him like this. And two, I knew why he needed help. I flashed to the limousine waiting outside the Tucson for the rock star, then to the same license plate on the same black car as it sped away from the cul de sac at the State Capitol after the governor had leapt out of it. Then I saw the look on Brookside's face when Bubba was whispering to him at the banquet.

I turned to Cuddy. “Andy,” I told him. “Andy Brookside. That's why it's Bubba's problem.” When Cuddy looked puzzled, I pointed at Percy. “Right, Bubba? The governor's mixed up with her?”

Bubba glanced at me, alarmed at my knowledge, but finally he nodded, dropping his sweaty auburn head into his long pink fleshy hands. “Fuckin' unbelievable. You heard too.”

“Just a guess.” Strangely I felt a bone-sharp reluctance to believe that this woman who had called so seductively to me across the empty space of the Tucson bar this afternoon should have gone the same evening to a tryst with Andrew Brookside. How involved were Mavis and the governor if what happened at their meeting had been so emotionally distressing that afterwards she'd taken her own life? Had whatever happened between them led to Lee's not showing up at the Gala? I nudged Bubba's foot. “Was it Andy who found her body?”

“No! God, no!” Bubba took a breath and his press secretary voice emerged. “The governor is not romantically involved with Mavis Mahar. But he did visit her briefly at her hotel suite this afternoon. I mean, her suicide didn't have anything to do with the governor, let's get clear on that.” He added with real despair, “I admit the timing sucks.” As Bubba frowned earnestly at Cuddy, I watched him fighting to keep desperate sincerity in his voice. “I hate what I'm asking, but I
am
asking, Cuddy, I'm gonna beg you—”

Cuddy scoffed, “I don't like it already—”

But Bubba hurried ahead. “Can't we keep the governor out of this? It's gonna be a media circus. They get a whiff of Andy and the re-election's fucked!” The thought seemed to make Bubba's hand shake, sloshing beer on his ruffled wrist.

“Does Mrs. Brookside know about them?” Cuddy looked through his glass sliders at the black moonlit woods as he asked. “Is that why she wasn't at the banquet?”

Bubba turned prim. “She had the flu.”

With a growl Cuddy stalked over to the kitchen counter, lobbed his Coke can into his recycle bin. “Can't that idiot ever learn anything?”

He was referring, I assumed, to Andrew Brookside's past recklessness with women. Shortly before his first gubernatorial election, the opposition had made a videotape of Brookside having sex with an exotic “model” whom the opposition had hired for just that purpose. His opponent, my cousin Julian Dollard, was mortified by the existence of the smut tape, having had no idea what his campaign workers had been up to on his behalf. (Julian had almost no ideas about anything.) Being a gentleman, and vulnerable himself because these same campaign workers had also supplied with stolen guns a team of white extremists who'd killed a man, Julian had suppressed the tape.

A month later, Andy beat him in the governor's race by a margin of 45 percent to 41 percent; the other 14 percent voting for a television evangelist. Julian was doubtless much happier playing golf all day than he would have been running North Carolina, and Andy was doing a fine job. Over the years, I had heard no rumors of any further womanizing on his part, and all of us had assumed that his near-misses in the past had taught him if not temperance at least discretion. Obviously not.

Cuddy came back to Bubba with a paper towel for the spilled beer. “How much does the press already know? What's on the news?” He pointed at the television. Actually what was on the muted late local news right then was not about Mavis Mahar at all (which suggested they didn't know about it yet), but a clip from the Governor's Gala at the capitol. In it, Carol Cathy Cane was interviewing Andy Brookside and looking at him as if she wished they were in a small bed on a long cruise together.

Bubba said, “Nothing's on the news and if it stays that way I'll take Jesus on my knees as my personal savior.”

Cuddy grabbed his phone. “Okay, Bubba, I'll see where things are. Who took the call at HPD? Who went out there? Anybody you knew? When'd she go to the morgue?”

The press secretary's jaw dropped. “
Nobody
went out there. I fucking found her by myself and you're the first person I've told! I went over there after the banquet had finished up to see if she was okay. I just about fell over her body and then I came straight here to you. I didn't call anybody. She's still out there.”

Now it was our turn to stare at him. It had not occurred to either of us that Mavis Mahar's suicide wasn't already in the hands of professionals, her body already in the city morgue. Appalled, Cuddy actually ran at Bubba. “You didn't call 911?” He speed-dialed his telephone. “You didn't get her an ambulance??!!”

Bubba peered hopelessly down at the bows on his patent-leather pumps. “What for? She blew her fuckin' head off! She's dead, she looked like something in a freezer, she's dead!”

Cuddy had the receiver at his ear, already connected to HPD. “
Where? Where is she, Bubba?
”

“The Fifth Season, you know, North Cove. A bungalow.” Bubba's teeth started chattering. “Either of you got any Valium or Xanax?” He was now shaking so hard he had to hold his arms.

“Here. It's shock.” I threw Martha Mitchell's plaid lap robe at him. But lying there blind in her cushioned bed, the old poodle kept up a horrible growl until I pulled the robe back off Bubba, returned it to her, and tossed him instead the Tarheels blanket lying on Cuddy's TV-watching chair. Bubba tucked it under his chin as if he were going to ask somebody to shave him.

I said, “What was Mavis Mahar doing at The Fifth Season? Nancy told me the whole entourage was staying downtown at the Sheraton.”

Bubba muttered into the sheet, “The Fifth Season was secret; she'd rented it under the name Agnes Connolly. I don't know why. She was dead when I got there, Justin. It's not like I left her there and she was alive!”

Cuddy was telling the on-duty supervisor to rush an ambulance and patrol officers over to The Fifth Season. He said we had a suicide; he didn't say whose, just that he wanted the victim's room sealed off as fast as possible. While he was talking, I crowded Bubba on the immense leather couch. “What time was it really,” I asked him, “when you went over to The Fifth Season and saw her dead? It was way earlier than you said, wasn't it?”

Burrowed to the nose in the blanket, Bubba turned his back with a truculent shrug. “No, just before I drove over here. What a waste, man…. Though they didn't really know each other well, the governor will be shocked and saddened when I call him,” he added as a sort of trial press release.

Cuddy yelled at him from the phone, “What's the bungalow number?”

“Eight. The one down by the lake.”

I kept at Bubba. “You're telling me that right after you saw her dead, you drove straight over here?” I looked at my watch.

“Yeah.” His nose twitched and he rubbed at it angrily. He was lying.

“You sure you didn't tell Andy at the banquet tonight, around 11:30? I saw you come back in, looking green in the face, and you hauled Andy out of there. You knew she was dead then, didn't you?” I shook him.

“What's with you, Justin?”

“You just walk over her body and drive back to the Governor's Mansion for some pork medallions? Jesus!” I shoved him away from me.

He muttered something obscene at me.

“Don't fuck with us, Bubba,” I yanked him around to face me. “You not only won't get any help with your ‘problem,' you'll spend some unpleasant time where there won't be any mirrors to comb your hair in.”

“Back off, Savile.” He jerked away from me again, huddling with my beer behind the Tarheels blanket. “It's freezing in here!”

They'd transferred Cuddy. Now he was ordering a team from the ID section to hurry to the resort.

I stepped around Bubba so he'd have to look at me. “Why'd you go to The Fifth Season to see Mavis Mahar?”

“To find out why she'd missed her concert.”

“What do you care why she missed her concert? And how'd you know about this ‘retreat' if it was so secret? You over there to check on her for Andy? Andy having an affair with her?”

He shook his head vehemently. “He knew her casually, from a few fundraisers.”

“Yeah sure, Bubba.”

I heard Cuddy on the phone now to Dick Cohen, the medical examiner, waking him up.

Bubba faced me. “I swear. I'd gotten word she'd skipped out on her concert at Haver. None of her people could locate her, so I told Andy. That's what you saw me doing at the banquet. Then afterwards, I thought I'd go check on her.”

“I repeat, what's her skipping a concert to you or Andy?”

“Andy facilitated Haver's letting Mavis sing in the stadium. They were worried there'd be problems. He felt responsible.”

I said, “Bullshit.” He glared at me. “You hop in your car past midnight to check on this woman all the way out at The Fifth Season just because she's a political acquaintance of the governor's and he's looking out for Haver University?” No answer. “If Mavis Mahar was already dead, how'd you get into her bungalow?'”

He grumbled into the Tarheels wrap.

“What?”

“The door was open.”

“Rock stars don't leave their doors open.”

“Well, it was. But I was figuring she'd let me in.”

“Even though you and Andy didn't know her very well?”

“Don't start with me, Savile.” He stirred himself into indignation. “Look, I could have just gone home and crashed and kept my mouth shut.”

“You haven't told anybody? You didn't tell the governor?”

He looked away from me. “No, nobody.”

Cuddy was holding the door open, “Let's go. “

I kicked Bubba to his feet.

We sped along the Old 28 in our borrowed cruiser, this time with siren and barlight flashers, on our way to the northern shore of Pine Hills Lake. Cuddy's apartment was on the opposite side of town; the ID team and the M.E. would get there sooner than we would. Bubba perched forward in the back seat, fingers squeezed into the wire mesh that separated us, insisting that he hadn't done anything wrong, and that if I threatened him with jail again he'd have my badge. He represented the governor of this state for fuck's sake. This was a suicide by Mavis Mahar, a world-famous recording artist; this wasn't some cheesy carhop mattress-banger ODing on a big bottle of discount aspirin because some poonhound with a Kmart franchise had gone back to his wife.

Cuddy wheeled around in his seat. “Bubba, shut up. We ask you a question, you answer it, you don't do anything else.” There was something in Cuddy's face that scared even the impervious Percy because at least for a while he did exactly that. Not that his answers to Cuddy's questions bore much relation to the truth. He persisted in his claim that the governor and the rock star had been no more than political acquaintances with a shared affinity for saving wildlife and housing victims of ethnic cleansing. His press secretary voice had a syrupy sincerity to it that made him sound strangely like Ronald Reagan. “Well, what Andy and Mavis shared was all the causes they were both committed to and that's all they shared.”

Cuddy said, “Bubba, don't practice on us. I swear I'll book you for leaving the scene. Was Brookside alone with her in that bungalow?”

Bubba admitted that the governor had dropped by Mavis's Fifth Season suite alone, briefly, twice. Yesterday afternoon, to say hello. Was he responsible for the star's hour-late arrival at her first Haver concert? Absolutely not. But the governor had been concerned about her not showing up at her second concert and he'd asked Bubba to go check on her.

Cuddy asked why Miss Mahar would share with a casual acquaintance like the governor (and his press secretary), the address of her secret hideaway. Bubba shrugged; Mavis was friendly and unpredictable. She had once given a Cartier watch to the maid cleaning her hotel bathroom.

Cuddy nodded. “Mmmm, that does sound friendly. I'm sorry I didn't meet Ms. Mahar in time to scrub out her sink. How 'bout today? When was Brookside there today?”