Chapter 14
I’m not going to say I miss the roller-coaster ride of Neena from yesterday, but I’m not even seated before Jackie begins to complain.
“This chair is revolting,” Jackie snaps, all the while wiping her lacy handkerchief over the imaginary dust on the pristine
tan-and-white-striped lounge chair.
I mean, he’s a man of words, yes. Lyrics are a part of his nature.
I think I’m still blushing off that one.
At any rate, I’m going to have to do without my friendly shadow for a couple of hours.
It took some convincing, but Nash finally agreed to leave me for his own morning workshop session. He had to, really. It was
one thing to announce everyone needed to stay in pairs, but the reality is, we also have our sessions and the public’s expectations.
So, after making me promise to stay in public view among loungers, waders, and, least relieving, Neena, who is now fully immersed
in water aerobics, he left me to interview Jackie.
The sky looks a buttery gold this late morning, with clear skies overhead and an abundance of golden inner tubes glittering
in the pool ahead. The deck is unusually packed today, most likely because Neena tends to draw a crowd wherever she goes.
People, as it turns out, love Nerve-Pill Neena. She’s a regular fun bus.
Jackie, on the other hand . . .
When she does finally sit, she’s stiff as a board.
You know, there was a leaflet I referred to when booking this place. On the cover of the ad was a big picture of a model sitting
in this exact place, pool behind her. A woman in a flirty yellow polka-dot swimsuit leaning back slightly, laughing with her
huge, bright smile toward the sky, like it’d just told her the best joke and all the world was happy and gay.
Meanwhile, Jackie’s back is rail straight, her hands grip each knee firmly, her feet are planted on the ground, and the toes of her brown loafers face directly north.
Jackie, let’s just say, is not the kind of person you can use to market a vacation. She’s more of a Zoloft-before-it-starts-working
ad gal. The person you bring in to film the real doom and gloom before the antidepressant kicks in.
She glares at my barely slumped shoulders.
I know she’s glaring to make a point about my barely slumped shoulders, because her exact words to me once were, “And how
could you expect to find a husband, Penelope, when you are flying down life’s highway toward hunchback land?”
I straighten.
And part of me automatically moves to look back to Nash, so used to having him, when I stop myself.
“How was breakfast, Jackie?” I say politely, holding my phone at my side.
“Don’t waste my time with twaddle. Get to it.”
“Please don’t take this personally. This is just protocol,” I say, turning back to Jackie. “I’m going to interview everyone
to see what we can get figured out here.”
“And your little cowboy boyfriend? What about him?”
My head jolts up from my phone. “What?”
“Or perhaps you prefer to believe the frailest of our group are the likeliest to commit the most gruesome of crimes,” she
continues, squinching up her little nose. “Seems you are picking favorites to me.”
“Play nice, Jackie,” Neena trills from the center of the pool, holding two bright pink fans overhead with the others while
partaking in some kind of flamingo walk. “Just because your tea wasn’t a perfect 180 degrees this morning—”
“People were murdered,” Jackie snaps back loudly. “This is no time to sit around drinking mojitos.”
Several ladies turn to Neena, who puts a flamingo fan to her mouth and says in a hushed tone, “Her only daughter turned thirty and told her she doesn’t want children.”
Several sympathetic heads nod.
Neena begins what looks like a conga line now, and the ladies follow in line, pink fans raised high.
Amazing.
Celebrity-ish folk can get away with just about anything.
“I’ll just jump to it then,” I say hastily, lifting up my phone. “We’ll zip right through this and then you can be on your
way. Where were you the night of the murder?”
“You know that.”
“Pretend I don’t.”
Even her annoyed sighs are crisp and efficient. “In my bed like everyone else.”
“How long have you known Hugh?”
“You know that answer too.”
“Pretend I don’t.”
“Forty years.”
“And how long have you been working with Hugh?”
“You know.”
I grit my teeth. “Pretend I don’t.”
Jackie sighs in exasperation. “Forty years.”
“And would you say your relationship with Hugh has been . . .” I hesitate. Shoot. I’ve boxed myself in with a yes-or-no question. Rookie mistake. “A . . . good one?”
“Obviously.”
“You . . .” Shoot. I’ve done it again. “Like him?”
“Obviously.”
“How would you describe, in one word, your relationship with Hugh over the years?”
The little crease between her eyes deepens, and she purses her lips while she thinks. “Trying,” she says at last.
Both ways, I’m sure.
I type it down while saying, “Why stay a part of The Seven then? Why not leave?”
“For obvious reasons.”
I look up. “Jackie, anytime you find yourself wanting to say the word obviously, let’s just go ahead and use that moment for you to explain precisely what is obvious, alright? Let’s just assume that nothing
is obvious to me.”
She drops her head back, as though I have just asked her to do something incredibly demanding.
“When Hugh found himself on that elevator with myself and the others, I was a twenty-six-year-old woman with two meager books
behind me. I went to that writing event to meet my agent. To my chagrin, over lunch, that agent let me go. I wasn’t worth
the invested time.”
Jackie rubs her nose.
“I got on that elevator with every intention of leaving writing—my dream—behind. And when it halted halfway down, there I
found myself, trapped with six other authors. Packed like sardines. But”—she shrugs—“turns out I was packed with none other
than Gordon Pesque and Hugh Griffin, and that wasn’t a bad place to be. Far less so six hours later when Hugh hatched his
grand plan. I went into an elevator at the worst moment of my life and emerged at its peak.”
Well. It’s both sweet and sad to announce the happiest day of your life was forty years ago.
“What about Neena, Ricky, and the other two—”
“Patricia and Mark—”
“—who’ve retired now? Were they successful too?”
“Everyone except me on that elevator could have stood under the definition of successful. But even Neena’s sixty thousand
copies sold on a book is a far cry from two million. Gordon and Hugh were the lions of the group.”
Fascinating. I knew Hugh was always right up there with having his face on a cereal box, but not Gordon.
“And why do you think he wanted you to join The Magnificent Seven?” I say. “If it wasn’t for the sales.”
“I had a bag of toffees in my purse.”
I tilt my head. “I’m sorry. What?”
“I had a bag of toffees in my purse. I shared them at some point.”
I must have looked dubious, because she adds, “What? I’m not a monster. At any rate, he said he was forever in my gratitude.”
Jackie sniffs a little longer now and reaches for her hankie. “At least that’s the way the story goes. The reality is, I was
just in the right place at the right time. Hugh, unlike others in my life, had no problem sweeping me along despite who”—she
sniffs again—“who I was. Trying as he may have been sometimes, he also . . . is the kind of friend few are lucky enough to
experience in their life.”
Emotion fills her throat as she speaks, and I catch the double meaning in her words, the self-awareness as she quietly admits
how difficult she can be.
She’s never admitted it.
Hugh loved her through it all.
As should I.
“That’s why he called you Toffee sometimes?” I exclaim. “I thought it was to annoy you.”
“Particularly remarkable people can draw up feelings of reminiscence and annoyance simultaneously.”
Jackie gives a sniff as she puts her handkerchief to her nose.
“Oh, Jackie.” I can’t help it. I reach out and give the hand gripping her knee a sympathetic squeeze.
For anybody else, any normal person, you would’ve heard those words and thought nothing of them.
But in half a decade, I can honestly say this is as emotional as Jackie has ever been.
And that includes the time everyone surprised her for her Historical Lifetime Achievement Award in London three months after her husband had passed (which, for the record, included a twelve-hour flight) and she gave us in turn
a very connected eye glance from the podium during her speech.
Which of course sent Neena into tears and drew Crystal—who had completely missed the moment by hovering over the cheese table—back
to her seat begging to know what she’d missed. (The real question: What doesn’t she miss?)
Jackie pulls her hand away from mine.
That was enough human contact to keep her fueled for the next ten years, easy.
“Right. Well. Let’s move on,” I say, taking her cue and looking to my list of questions. “You are among the closest companions
of Hugh.” I quickly add, “Aside from the pool of support in being a part of The Seven, have you ever gained direct monetary
resources from Hugh or will you in the future?”
Jackie purses her lips. “If you’re not so subtly asking if I was greedy for money, no. I didn’t need Hugh for financial gain, or any gain for that matter, five years after the commencement of our social contract. I could have
stepped away and published successfully onward forever. The choice to stay was and is entirely mine. And if you’re trying
to ask if I’m in his will, how would I know? He never told me if I was, and I don’t care about his stuff either way. I don’t
need money. I don’t need anything. It’s quite obvious who the killer is.” She shakes her head. “Stupid man. I always told him he would get himself
into trouble.”
My slowly retracting shoulders shoot up. “Who do you think it is?”
She frowns as if I’m the stupid one now.
Her nose creases.
She waves a hand. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I must’ve told him a thousand times what a foolish game it was to play the hero,