A ruling passion : a novel (80 page)

"I don't understand," Lily said. "Why wouldn't Carlton have told you? It was such a wonderful thing to do; the kind of thing people do together."

Valerie looked at Nick. "I didn't tell you before. Carl and Sybille were having an affair."

"Oh, no!" Lily cried.

Nick put his finger to his lips. 'We don't want Chad to hear any of this."

"Oh, yes, of course. But how could they—.""

"She got him to invest in Graceville," Nick said to Valerie. "But he didn't have the money, is that right? He'd lost a pile in the stock market."

Valerie nodded. "Close to fifteen million dollars. We didn't know anything about it until after he died. Carl never told me when things weren't good. Sometimes he told me later, when he'd pulled himself out—recouped what he'd lost, or whatever he did—but mosdy he acted as if everything was fine, and I just assumed everything was. I never had any idea how bad things could be."

"Recouped what he'd lost," Nick repeated slowly.

Watching him, Valerie heard her own words. When he^d pulled himself out — recouped what he'd lost... "Sybille," she said.

Nick gripped her hand more tightly. "If she told him he could recoup the money he lost in the market by investing—"

"—in land," Valerie said, picking up the thought. By now it was a puzzle: less personal, and so easier to think about. "They'd buy it with his thirteen million and sell it for thirty—"

"—and he could make.,. well, we don't know how much he could make because we don't know how many people got a piece of the thirty million. But suppose he got twenty-five or so—double what he'd put up—enough to replace most of what he lost in the market and pay off his mortgages and loans. You wouldn't know anything about it, and he'd try to make back the rest—a million, two niillion, whatever it was—in the market."

"But Carl didn't buy it," Valerie said. "Neither did Sybille. Beauregard Development bought it."

"Right. A Panamanian corporation, which means it doesn't have to reveal the names of its stockholders, and there's no way of checking. But if you had to guess who they are, who would it be?"

"How about Sybille?"

"Or the Foundation," Nick said. "Run by those board members who keep cropping up. Either one would be a pretty good guess."

"That doesn't make sense," Lily said. She had been listening with a deep frown, her chin propped in both hands. 'Tou're saying the board bought the land, and then bought it again, from itself. That just doesn't make sense. If Sybille or the Foundation already owned it, why would they take thirty million dollars from the Foundation—thafs

money that people sent in, a few dollars at a time, because they believed in what we were doing!—why would they use that to buy land they already owned?"

"To make a profit," Valerie said patiendy. "That seems to be the whole reason for building Graceville."

"That's not true!" Lily cried in anguish. "That's a terrible thing to say!"

"I know," Valerie said swiftly. "And we don't know it for sure; we're guessing about a lot of this, and maybe I went too far. We aren't sure of anything," she said, looking at Nick. "We have no proof All we have are a lot of theories."

Nick was writing a sequence of events. "Right," he said absendy. "We won't have anything until someone talks, or lets us see the Foundation books. We can talk to the board members, though; interview them for 'Blow-Up.' One of them might give us some answers. We should start that as soon as possible. This week."

Valerie nodded. "Although..." She hesitated. "That will alert all of them."

"We can't help that. At some point they're going to know. We'll just keep it vague when they ask what we're looking for. You know something we don't have? Dates. When did Beauregard Development buy the land, and when was it sold to the Foundation?"

'I don't know when Beauregard bought it. The Foundation bought it three months later."

"I know that, but when did all this happen? Do you know?"

"No. Sophie might."

"Could you call her? As long as we're putting this together, let's try to get it all."

"Eleven o'clock," Valerie murmured. "But she never goes to bed before midnight."

Sophie answered on the first ring. "Of course I'm still up," she told Valerie. "I brought work home; I'm at my desk. What do you need?" Valerie told her. "I don't know offhand, but I brought home that file; let me check." In a minute she was back. "Found it. Sold to Beauregard Development on December second; they closed the deal on January fifiJi."

A coldness clutched Valerie's heart. January fifth. The day Carlton was killed.

She thought back, remembering. Everything about the crash was as vivid now as the day after it happened. Carl had spent the night in his office; she had heard him opening and closing desk drawers. He had

come into the bedroom at seven, carrying a folder of papers. rm£foin^ back. Right away. I have things to do; I can^t put them off any longer.

That was three days before they had been scheduled to return.

"—still with me?" Sophie asked.

"Yes," Valerie said. "What did you say?"

"I gave you the other date you wanted. The Foundation bought the land from Beauregard Development on April eighth. Was that all you wanted?"

"Yes. Thank you." When Valerie hung up, she looked at Nick. "Beauregard bought the land on December second. The closing was January fifth."

"That's the day the plane crashed!" Lily cried.

"Carl was in a hurry to come back," Valerie told Nick. "He said he had business to take care of"

"Either he decided he had to be there, or he wanted to stop it."

"I think he wanted to stop it," Valerie said. "He was terribly anxious, and in such a rush he didn't even do his whole checklist before we took off."

"Second thoughts," mused Nick. "Worried about losing the money and never getting it back..."

"Or it wasn't a straight deal and he decided not to go along..."

"Or he didn't want to be tied forever to Sybille."

Once again their eyes met and held. In the midst of the excitement of building from one thought to another was a different kind of excitement: working together, thinking together, making leaps from fragmentary information, perhaps too high, perhaps too fast, but together, in a rhythm that was almost sexual. "I suppose we'll never know," Nick said. "But it probably was one of those reasons. Maybe all of them."

Valerie was still remembering. That whole day rushed through her memory like a speeded-up film. Sorry, Vol ... Tried to keep it. Now youHl know. Shit, lost control ... lost it! Thought Fd fix it.. .get started again. Too late. Sorry, Val, sorry.. .Acted like water in the tanks.. .But — both tanks? Never had any before. Didn't check. Too much hurry to take off. Not my fault! No accident! Listen! Water in both tanks! Fuck it, should have thought she might..."

Valerie closed her eyes. She felt sick. "Nick, listen." She repeated what Carl had said.

^"5/;^?^^ Nick echoed.

"The investigators thought he meant his plane. Calling it 'she.' But if he meant a woman..."

"Don't say it," Lily whimpered. She held her hands over her ears and squeezed shut her eyes.

"She was there," Valerie said to Nick. "She and Lily were at the house with us, the day before we left to fly back."

They looked at each other for a long time, past Lily's huddled form. The day before the closing. The day before Sybille spent Carl's thirteen million dollars to buy land for Graceville. The day before Carl decided to rush back, maybe to stop the closing, maybe to change something involved in it, maybe simply to be more active in the deal. The day before the plane crashed.

"Nobody would do anything like that!" Lily said, her voice high and wavering. It was a question, and a plea, more than a certainty. "Nobody would make a plane crash! Five people... five people could have been killed! You can't think anybody would do that! Not... not Sybille... not anybody!"

"We don't know what happened," Nick said somberly, "but we have to find out."

Valerie had picked up Nick's pencil and was drawing dark lines with it on the pad of paper. "Even if she had something to do with it, she wouldn't have done it herself, would she?"

"Probably not. But that would mean hiring someone; she wouldn't take that chance."

"Her pilot," Valerie said. "She flew up there in the Foundation plane."

Nick put his hand on hers, stopping her from making any more jagged, anguished pencil marks. "We have to talk to him. There's nothing else we can do. We have to find out what happened that night."

Chapter 28

ray for Reverend Lily!" Floyd Bassington boomed, his voice rolling through the Cathedral of Joy and into the television cameras, where it traveled thousands of miles to the faithful throughout the land. "She is ill and lies in a narrow bed, desolate at not being here with you. She will return as soon as she can; she knows how you need her; she knows how you long to have her with you again. She will be back very soon! She is watching us now: hear us, Reverend Lily! We are longing for your return! We send you our prayers; we send you our love!"

Floyd Bassington was having the time of his life. Never had he preached in a setting of such magnificence, to so many bowed heads arrayed before him like a field of drooping flowers, and to all those invisible millions in the land of television, hanging on his words. He had never been televised. This was a first. His chest billowed out, he stood on his toes and looked up. I lift up mine eyes to the cameras, he thought happily.

"But we have an enemy!" he cried, ending his pause before his television audience could get resdess and switch to another channel. Faces

swam up to him; the field of flowers became a heaven of pale moons with startled eyes fastened on Floyd Bassington. "An enemy who wants to destroy our beloved Reverend Lily! An enemy who plots to throw her to the wolves of rapacious atheists and gossipmongers! An enemy who schemes to tear her frail body to pieces with bayonets of lies and innuendo!"

"Shit, he's off his rocker," muttered Arch Warman to Monte James and Sybille. They were in Lily's apartment behind the pulpit, watching Bassington on television. "Get him to tone it down. Signal him, or something. Nobody's gonna take this crap seriously."

"Of course they will," Sybille said absendy. She was standing, about to leave the room. "He's like a cheerleader; the words aren't important, it's rhythm and volume that count. I'll be back in a minute."

'Tou leaving again?" Monte James demanded. "What the fuck's going on? This is important, damn it, you ought to know what he's saying out there."

Sybille slipped through the door without answering. She could not let them know, but she was going mad with worry about Lily. She had disappeared. Sybille had called every hotel and motel, every hospital, everyone at her production company, the members of the Foundation board; no one knew anything about Lily. Gone, gone, gone. The word hammered in Sybille's head. She did not sleep. She did not eat. She telephoned other ministers, other television evangelists, she even tracked down Rudy Dominus, altering her story so no one knew how frantic she was. "She's taking a trip and thought she might stop by to see you; I wanted to catch her if she was there. Not yet? Well, I'll find her somewhere else. Thanks so much..."

Gone, gone, gone. I have nothing without her, Sybille thought, and then wiped out the thought. She went to the pay telephone at the other end of the corridor and called the answering machine at her home. "Sybille, I'm staying with a friend." Lily's voice, high and tremulous, came through the tape. "I'll be here awhile. I don't want to talk to you. I can't preach. Don't worry about me. I'm fine." Sybille heard the sound of the telephone being hung up.

She stood still with the receiver in her hand. Her knees were weak. Staying with a friend. Lily had no friends. Whom had she latched onto? Who was working on her, poisoning her against Sybille, stealing her away?

"Sybille," Arch Warman said urgendy "We want you to hear this."

For the first time, she did not put him in his place. In silence, she followed him back to Lily's suite.

"Television! The blessed technology that brings Reverend Lily to millions of souls who hunger for her voice, this blessed technology is being perverted for evil, to cut her into shreds and eliminate this church!" Bassington took a long breath and sent a long groan into the microphone. "E-and-N. A cable television network called E-and-N has decided to hound Reverend Lily to her death. It's not enough for these media maniacs that they attacked Jim and Tammy Bakker—poor sinners who deserve compassion!—and have swept them from sight with their sanctimonious brooms. Flushed with victory, they search out new victims! They turn to the purest of them all, the apotheosis of virginal, loving womanhood, and have sent their hired thugs to pry into the affairs of the Hour of Grace Foundation! Like rats with quivering nostrils, they have invaded the offices, camped on the doorsteps and the very desks of the dedicated men who make this holy cathedral, and all of Grace-ville, possible."

"He shouldn't spend so much time on that," said Monte James. "Why give those bastards free publicity? He shouldn't even give the name of the network."

"Then how would anyone attack them?" Sybille asked angrily. She was angry at everything and everyone now— staying with a friend, stay-in£i with a friend. She was angry at all of them, and these two were the worst. Stupid fools, letting Lily go; how did she get saddled with such asses? "You haven't forgotten that we planned the attack; even you can remember what we did yesterday."

"You did it; we went along," he growled. "Right. But Floyd shouldn't talk about them asking us questions. He should just get on with it!"

"And so we will make them feel the heat!" Bassington intoned. "We will march shoulder to shoulder on their doorstep! We will invade their offices! We will camp on their desks, with millions of letters and telegrams! We will warn their advertisers with our protests! We will shut that damnable E-and-N network down!

"March!" he roared. "March shoulder to shoulder! The ushers are passing around the address of the E-and-N offices and studios, and it is appearing now on your television screens. Go there! March on them! Picket them! Lie on their doorsteps so no one can go inside and join them in their evil doings! Write to them! Telegraph them! Tell them to leave our Reverend Lily alone or we will shut them down forever! Tell their advertisers we will never buy their products until they withdraw their support from that devil's network. Tell them—"

He had to catch his breath. His excitement was a whirlwind inside

him; he was dizzy and could not remember what he had been about to say. Tell them— Tell them what? The lights were hellishly hot. His shirt was drenched. Even his feet were perspiring; his toes slipped against each other. Behind his back he made an urgent gesture to the organist and the choir. Instantly the music rose, covering Bassington's confusion like the incoming tide, lifting the congregation on waves of glory.