When Venus Fell (29 page)

I held her gaze firmly. “Why should I help you?”

She scowled then gestured to Bea, who was suddenly serious. Bea clicked her thick fingers. “If respect isn’t in your heart by now, your help will mean nothing. But Herself believes
you have the knack for seein’ us as we need to be seen, for good or ill. We’re puttin’ our faith in you, dearie. It’s up to you whether you want it or no’.”

“What if Emory’s right? Maybe y’all should go into partnership with his investors.”

“Then perhaps we’re no’ regarding the situation with anything but our tired, wishful hearts. If you think our time here should come to an end, say so. For believe me or not, dear Gib sets store by your thoughts. He says you’re too honest for his own good, but he means that as a compliment.”

“I’ll go just to see how the dastardly Emory operates. But I don’t intend to get involved. I’m only doing this because I want to study how this family reacts to stress without luring unsuspecting visitors into disastrous marriages.”

Bea hooted. “We’ll turn you loose on Emory with that sharp sense of humor of yours and you’ll gut him like a trout!”

“I hate to disappoint you but I and my sense of humor have to change clothes first. Excuse me.” I gestured to the black silk pajama top I wore with ragged shorts made from sweatpants. Olivia’s fingers tightened on my wrist. Her eyes gleaming, she glanced at the placid-looking Beatrice with silent communication. “Oh!” Bea exclaimed. “It’s slippin’ my mind.” Bea looked at me slyly. “She wants to see your belly jewel.”

I opened a button on my pajama top. Olivia studied the silver stud in the rim of my navel. She smiled. As I buttoned up Bea chortled. “Half the county is talking about you. You’re said to be a godless and forthright woman with your belly jewels and your wild hair and your lonely ways!”

“Good.”

Olivia pulled out her pad from the golf cart’s driving console, scribbled calmly for a minute, then handed it to me.

I looked at her narrowly. Now I understood why she wanted me to meet Emory. She thought I might become her private attack dog—a young version of Herself, the new voice for deadly experience.

I’d met men like Emory Cameron before, men who had the flavor of silver spoons so firmly ingrained in their taste buds that their tongues had turned to silver plate. I walked into the library, took one look at the tall gray-haired patrician in his golf shirt, crisp khaki slacks, and diamond pinkie ring and thought,
Capitalist pig
. Which was a ten-cent cliché I’d never heard even Pop’s most fanatical political cronies utter seriously. I almost laughed aloud for thinking it.

Gib entered the room a second later and nodded to me. He angled slightly in front of me with his shoulder as he escorted me to Emory. Gib made the introduction and Emory shook my hand, smiling as he said, “I never know what kind of folks I’ll find taken underwing here. So you and your sister have joined our home for wayward strangers? Aunt Olivia’s support of ne’er-do-well women does get more peculiar with every passing year.”

Capitalist pig
, I almost said. But Gib took me by one arm, escorted me to the door, and said in a low, deadly tone, “Everybody’s in the dining room. Go tell them I’ll be there in a second.”

“Would you prefer I go back to the cottage and keep my nose out of this? Obviously I’m making you uncomfortable. And Emory is a—”

“I know what he is. He and I are about to have a conversation about what he just said. Out.” He touched the tip of my nose with his forefinger, I took a startled step backward, and he closed the double doors to the library. I stood there blankly facing the matched curlicue carvings of the doors.

“What are you doing here?” Ruth asked behind me, “if I may be so nosy about the newest and least likely member of our enormous family tree?” I pivoted. She lurked there in oversized pin-striped glory, looking every inch the swank, go-get-’em prosecutor.

“What do you
think
I’m doing here, Perry Mason? I was invited by Olivia. But at the moment I’m trying to decide if Gib’s in there defending my besmirched honor or agreeing with dear old asshole Cousin Emory.”

“Well at least you’ve pegged Emory right. I give you points for good judgment about him.” She grunted. “Gib
never
agrees with Emory, so you can safely assume he’s in there defending whatever honor you’ve got.”

“I’m surprised Emory isn’t putting his best foot forward, if he wants y’all to cooperate with his ideas.”

“He’s a smug prick. He thinks we’re desperate now.”

“So you’re saying that’s not the case. Good.”

“No, I’m saying we
are
desperate and we’ll probably end up taking his offer, because it makes sense, but we don’t have to like it. Or him.”

“Oh.”

We walked down the central hall. Ruth grunted, “By the way, keep your mouth shut during this discussion. You shouldn’t even be here.” She strode before me into the dining room, where Olivia and Bea were already seated, along with Isabel, who held Dylan on her lap. A burly young man with a thick face and thinning red hair commandeered one end of the long table, where he fiddled with a videotape. A portable TV and VCR sat on the end of the table, facing us. “Joey, this is the older sister of the woman who ran off with Carter,” Ruth said brusquely.

“Ruth,”
Isabel rebuked.

“Her name’s Venus Arinelli,” Ruth added with grudging etiquette. “Venus,
dear
, this is our cousin Joey.”

He stood. He was tall and also of the golf-shirt, country-club
variety, like his father. He crunched my hand in his handshake, then corrected Ruth in an annoyed tone. “Joseph.” He gave her a slit-eyed scowl and sat down.

“Joey used to visit here when we were kids,” Ruth went on blithely. “We’ve always given him credit for inspiring us. See, he’s older than the rest of us and we consider him an elder. When we were kids he’d sneak around and beat up on Gib, until Gib got big enough to take boxing lessons from old man Gummer over in Attenborough. Mr. Gummer was an Army heavyweight boxing champ back during World War Two. After Gib learned how to box we didn’t have much more trouble from
Joey
.” She grinned at her cousin, who chewed a gold fountain pen and flipped through a thick folder of documents, while his face turned red around the hairline.

“I remember when Ruth bit Joey,” Isabel ventured delicately, as if she were complimenting all involved. Bea and Olivia watched us with shrewd silence.

Ruth grinned. “Yep. Caught him stealing brandy out of the liquor cabinet. Bit a chunk out of his arm. I think I was about eight years old at the time. That was when I first knew I wanted to be a lawyer. Good godawmighty, it was so satisfying to catch a criminal and make him yelp.” She turned to me. “See what I mean about Joey being an inspiration?”

“Why, yes,” I said primly.

He raised his head and stared at me. “I hear that you and your sister work as entertainers. In bars.”

He made it sound as if we were strippers. “We’re musicians. We perform piano and violin duets. Pop music and standards. Most of our venues have been large hotels and restaurants.”

“Oh? I heard my cousin found you in a lesbian nightclub. Do you and your sister have a large lesbian following?”

Bea slammed a fist on the table. “You’re about to find yourself tossed out the door on your
arse
, Joey.”

I held his stare and neither one of us gave an inch.
“Large, small, medium,” I said evenly. “Lesbians of all sizes.”

“Is homosexuality a personal lifestyle choice of yours, or just a business?”

“
Music
is my business. My only requirement is that I play for people who have ears and brains. For example, I can see that even
you
have ears.”

“Since your sister married into our family,” Joseph went on, “with such
rare passion
”—he emphasized the words—“I assume she, at least, is bisexual? Or maybe the lure of money converted her.”

“Stop this,” Isabel said.

Olivia laid a gold-headed cane on the table. Bea clamped a hand on it. “Easy, now, dear. The child’s got him well in sight.”

Gib and Emory walked in at that moment with Min, who moved with thin, straight-backed dignity. Emory’s face was frozen in politeness, and so I bit my tongue. Min touched my shoulder as she passed by on her way to the chair Gib held for her. “You’ve been introduced to Emory and Joseph?” she asked.

“Yes, indeed. Thank you. I already feel as if I’ve known them all my life. It’s really astonishing how familiar some people are. From the first minute you talk to them, you know exactly what they’re all about.”

Min frowned in bewilderment at that exuberant response, Isabel covered her mouth, and Ruth said under her breath, “Too bad you never got the chance to bite back.”

Oh, I would, I would.

Gib stood in the back of the room with his arms folded over his chest. He wouldn’t have attended this session if he didn’t fear surrender might be the only wise route. Yet it was obvious this was tearing him apart.

“Let’s review the situation,” Emory said. He stood behind
the television as if it were a podium. He nodded to me with more deference than before, but it was only a cold facade. “I’ll go over some facts since we have a new member of the, hmmm, family, here, who may not be familiar with the details.”

Joseph handed him a sheaf of papers. He leafed through them idly, as if refreshing his memory. “Financially, Cameron Hall Inn, Incorporated, is still in the black, even after being closed for more than a year. Simon and Min managed the inn’s profits very well for a long time. They made solid investments and smart improvements. They operated on a sensible budget, and thus, thank God, the inn has been able to weather this storm—for now.

“But if this property remains idle for another full year, the taxes and maintenance costs will eat you folks alive. You’ll be headed toward serious trouble financially. And this valley, this grand old house, in fact our entire family legacy, will be jeopardized.

“I need an answer today, folks. I can’t put my investors off much longer. I realize that none of you have any deep affection for me. I’m a plain-spoken man. You may not agree with my ideas, but you know I sincerely care about preserving this legacy for generations to come.”

Emory paused, cleared his throat, sipped from a glass of iced tea Joseph handed him, then looked pointedly at Min. “Min, you’re tired. You don’t have the heart for the hard work required to manage the inn. You know Simon felt my plans had a lot of merit. You know he discussed them seriously with me, and with you, and with the family.”

“The only thing I
don’t
know,” Min said hoarsely, “is whether he would have ever gone through with it.”

“I believe he would have, Minnie. He wanted what was best for you and Jasper and Kelly. He wanted what was best for his brother and sisters, and for Bea and Olivia, and for this valley, and the house. He wanted you to relax and travel and never have to worry about a houseful of paying guests again. He wanted you to know how it felt to stay in five-star hotels
where
you
are the guest. And he wanted your children to love this place but never be slaves to its upkeep, the way the two of you had become.”

“I don’t think he was quite
that
way about it,” Min said. “What he really wanted was what I wanted—a little more help so that we could have some free time. It should have been simple, really, and—”

“Minnie, are you prepared to consign your children to an uncertain financial future—risk their college educations—for the sake of argument?”

Her shoulders sagged. “No, I’m not.”

“Good. Isabel?” He pivoted to the other side of the table. “Isabel, honey, you are the sweetest young woman I know. Your little paintings can make a decent living for you and Dylan, but will it be enough? You have to be both mother and father to Dylan now, and you don’t want him to look into your eyes one day and ask you why you didn’t do what was right—why you turned your back on the kind of money that would not only guarantee a wonderful future for him but also give you the freedom to paint your kittens and rabbits to your heart’s content.”

Isabel fretted and blushed. “I appreciate that concern, really I do, but I keep thinking that I have enough freedom already, and that money isn’t everything.”

“Tell your son that money isn’t important, when he’s a young man and he wants to know why his friends have so much more than he does.”

“That would take a bloody miracle,” Bea said darkly, “since it’s a boon day when a teenager is no’ discontent with life.”

Emory’s face took on an expression of stoic patience. He ignored Bea’s outburst and turned toward Ruth. “You’re young, and you have the talent, brains, and ambition to win the election for district attorney up here next fall. Hands down. I don’t doubt that you’ll move right on up the political ladder. Governor Ruth Cameron Attenberry someday. I can
picture that. United States Senator Ruth Cameron Attenberry. I can picture that.”

“
President
Attenberry,” Ruth said. “Picture
that
.”

“I can. I honestly can. But that kind of ambition takes full-time dedication, and you know it. And it takes money. Think what kind of start you’d get, Ruth, with the political nest egg you’d have if you and the others here form a partnership with my investors.”

“Well, Emory, it’s always intriguing when you say these things, but I picture myself as a populist, you know, a woman of the people, with grassroots support—”

“Be a populist, Ruth. But be a realist, too.”

She frowned. “Look, I’m the only one here who’s fully committed to your plan, but I think it’s safe to say Isabel and Min agree with me but haven’t been ready to vote before. This deal
is
going to happen for you, all right? You don’t have to go through this litany of our individual worries each time.”