Elected for Death Read online

  “You’re kidding,” Susan said. “Why?”

  “He claims threats have been made against him. Do you believe this? The man is running for mayor in one of the wealthiest suburbs on the eastern seaboard and he’s afraid for his life! This election is insane!”

  Well, she certainly couldn’t argue with that.

  TWO

  At the tea Kathleen gave the following afternoon, everyone was talking about the death threats Bradley Chadwick had claimed to receive. “I can’t believe it,” Susan cried to Kathleen. “You give a party for Jed and the group he’s running with, and everyone is talking about the man they’re running against.”

  “Ivan Deakin?” Kathleen asked, looking anxiously at the buffet table. “Do you think I should ask the waiters to pick this up and start serving dessert?” she muttered without waiting for Susan to respond to her first question.

  “Not Ivan Deakin! Bradley Chadwick—he’s still claiming that he’s gotten death threats. Kathleen, haven’t you been listening to what people are talking about?”

  “I’ve been too busy.” Kathleen tucked her scarlet silk shirt more tightly into her slender black wool slacks. “Did you know that practically no one has had tea and the caterers are running out of gin? Who would have thought that so many people would be drinking hard liquor in the middle of Sunday afternoon? Jerry has had to go into our liquor cabinet.”

  “This election is enough to drive anyone to drink,” Susan muttered. As a candidate’s wife, she had been one of the minority that was sticking to the Earl Grey, but she was planning on a large goblet—or two—of chardonnay when she got home.

  “Hmm.” Kathleen was still staring at the ravaged buffet table.

  “You’re not listening to me, are you?” Susan asked.

  “Yes, I am. You were talking about someone being driven to drink … maybe someone like Theresa Martel?” Kathleen concluded, less sure of herself than she had been.

  “Theresa Martel is drinking?” Susan asked.

  “I’ll say.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Theresa,” Susan muttered as Kathleen rearranged half-filled dishes on the table.

  “Surprised me, too,” Kathleen admitted, handing Susan a plate that held the rind of a wheel of Brie and a few broken water biscuits. “Will you take this to the kitchen for me? And will you ask whoever is in charge out there to start getting the desserts ready?”

  “Sure,” Susan muttered absentmindedly. She was puzzled by Kathleen’s description of Theresa Martel. Until now Theresa had impressed Susan as being the perfect political wife: always neat, ineffably cheerful, and incapable of saying or doing anything controversial. The fact that Theresa was drinking so much that Kathleen commented on it came as a surprise.

  Susan complied with Kathleen’s request and then plunged back into the crowd to find Theresa. She had been wrong yesterday when she told Kathleen that these teas were always boring. If the noise level of the room was any indication of enthusiasm, then Kathleen’s tea was in the running for the party of the year. But a more discerning listener would realize that, though the noise level was high, its tone was mainly angry.

  Kathleen and Jerry lived in a large traditional home on a hilly, winding, tree-lined street in Hancock. Kathleen, not terribly domestic, had left the interior to a decorator and lived happily in someone else’s dream of English country furnishings, accented with plastic creations from PlaySkool and Fisher-Price. Today the living room, dining room, den, hallway, and sunporch were filled with small groups of people who had come together in order to argue with their neighbors.

  Susan squeezed through the crowd and smiled at Jed, who looked pretty uncomfortable penned in between a neighbor who believed that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and a man who explained his every thought with a reference to an event in his childhood. Under normal circumstances, Susan would have rescued Jed from such company, but during the first week of the campaign, he had explained to her that it was now his job to listen to people. So she left him to his fate.

  Unfortunately there were a number of people, like the woman yesterday afternoon, who believed that listening to his future constituents was also the job of the candidate’s wife. Susan had accommodated those people for a couple of weeks. Then she realized that she was going to have to choose between having a life and being a conduit to her husband. So she had perfected (she hoped) the art of looking like she was rushing off on an important errand no matter what she was actually doing. She frowned, knitted her brows, pursed her lips, and continued her search for Theresa Martel.

  “Susan? Are you all right? You look like you have a toothache!”

  “No. I’m fine. Just busy,” Susan explained to a friend from the field club. “I’m looking for Theresa Martel.”

  “The last time I saw her, she was heading for the bathroom in the hallway—under the stairs. She didn’t look very well,” the other woman responded.

  “Probably the seafood pâté,” Susan suggested, hurrying toward the hall. Better, she thought, to trash the caterer than her husband’s running mate’s wife. After Camilla Logan, no one wanted another mayor’s wife with a drinking problem.

  The downstairs bathroom was located under the stairway to the second floor. The door was locked, so Susan knocked politely and leaned back against the wooden wainscoting to wait for Theresa. Except for three women, resting on the stairs while trashing the elementary-school gym teacher, the hallway was empty. Susan thought about Theresa Martel as she waited.

  She hadn’t officially met the woman until the cocktail party the Martels had hosted the Friday of the week that Anthony—she must remember to call him Tony—had gotten his ticket together. She had seen her about town, of course. Theresa was an adjunct professor at a nearby community college. Susan wasn’t sure what her field was, but she did know that Theresa was intensely involved in many organizations in town; the League of Women Voters, the PTA, and the local historical society had all benefited from her efforts. Dedicated and competent were words she had heard used in connection with Theresa. She hoped drunk wouldn’t be added to the list.

  Susan frowned and knocked on the door again.

  “There are two other bathrooms upstairs,” one of the women sitting on the steps called out.

  “I know,” Susan answered. “I was just looking for … for the person in this bathroom.”

  “Why? Are you going to have a baby?”

  “I thought Theresa Martel was in there,” Susan explained, bewildered.

  “Nope. Dan Hallard is.”

  Susan immediately backed away from the doorway. Dan, her gynecologist as well as her next-door neighbor, had been cornering her ever since she returned from vacation. He had been buying older homes in town, having them remodeled, and then selling them at enormous profits; therefore he had very strong feelings about the historical-landmark issue—feelings that she was pretty sure she could recite in her sleep by now.

  “I think I saw Theresa walking toward the kitchen,” someone called out, and Susan started off toward the back of the house.

  Only the caterers were in the kitchen, but one of them revealed that he had seen a tall, thin woman with a slash of white through her dark hair walking out the back door. Susan followed that path and discovered Theresa Martel throwing up into a patch of wilting Dusty Miller.

  “Theresa? Are you all right?” Susan cried out, fumbling around in the pocket of her Anne Klein jacket for a clean handkerchief. “Here.”

  Theresa reached out to support herself on a nearby fence post. “Not really. I’m drunk for the first time since I was a sophomore in college.”

  “Well, everyone—” Susan started.

  “Yeah, everyone gets drunk once in a while—everyone except in-control Theresa Martel,” the other woman answered shortly.

  “So maybe you deserve it more than other people do.”

  Theresa chuckled gently. “Yes. Maybe I do.” She looked Susan straight in the eye. “I know Mrs. Gordon is a good friend of yours, but do y
ou think she would mind if we abandoned this party for a few minutes and went to sit on that lovely bench I see by the bed of chrysanthemums?”

  “Not at all,” Susan assured her, starting toward the elegant benches that were placed near a large circle of dying flowers. The furniture was fashioned from wood that was supposed to last forever without having had even a passing acquaintance with endangered forests, rainy or dry. It was surprisingly comfortable. “Are you feeling better?”

  “A little. A little better and a little embarrassed.”

  Susan didn’t comment.

  “You seem to be handling this campaign better than I am,” Theresa suggested.

  “I hate it so much that I abandoned my family and spent most of the summer in Maine,” Susan confessed. “Actually, though, I knew I was going to hate this—just not how much. People are so involved in this election. It’s like an obsession—and not the sexy thing from the perfume ads.”

  “I know what you mean,” Theresa responded quickly. “This Landmark Commission issue is making perfectly sane people act like idiots. You would think they were talking about life and death instead of personal property! This is certainly not the way Anthony thought this election would go.”

  Susan noticed that Theresa did not call her husband Tony. “I know that Jed didn’t even know about this Landmark Commission issue when he agreed to run.”

  “Neither did Anthony. Of course there’s no way the same thing could be said about Bradley Chadwick.” Theresa leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Actually, throwing up helped.” She grimaced. “That’s truly disgusting, isn’t it? I shouldn’t be criticizing other people. This election isn’t exactly bringing out the best in me. I thought that Anthony running for mayor would be an opportunity for me to make people aware of some of the things we can do for those less fortunate than ourselves—not just in Hancock but in the rest of the state.”

  Susan nodded. The alcohol was wearing off and Theresa’s usual personality was returning.

  “I thought I could convince people of the need to be less selfish, to look at how lucky most of the residents of Hancock are and share that wealth—and instead we have an election that seems to be entirely about property values! This is just not the type of election that Anthony and I should be involved in.”

  “More Bradley Chadwick’s type of thing,” Susan muttered.

  “Definitely. I don’t think Bradley has had an unselfish thought in his entire life.”

  “Well, what about Ivan Deakin?” Susan asked. “He didn’t even enter the race until the Landmark Commission’s decision was public knowledge and he isn’t even campaigning on any other issues.”

  “True. But that’s honest of him at least. Bradley claims to have been interested in … what does he call it? Leading Hancock into the twenty-first century? When all he’s really interested in is keeping the price of housing so high that only the wealthy can afford to live in Hancock.”

  This was a new slant on the Landmark Commission’s ruling and Susan didn’t know exactly what to say. Like many wives, she didn’t always listen to her husband’s every word. (Although she did think that she was better than Jed was. She had even thought of having a T-shirt made with the statement i don’t ask rhetorical questions printed across the chest to wear when her husband was home.) But Susan had not heard this interpretation of the possibility of landmark status for some homes in town.

  “I don’t understand,” Susan said slowly. “I thought the Landmark Commission wanted to keep houses built before 1939 from being altered in ways that were not in keeping with their history. Not that I understand exactly,” she mused. “Most of those houses have been altered more than once—well, more than a dozen times, since they were built.”

  “That’s the point,” Theresa interrupted. “The point of this ballot isn’t to preserve Hancock’s history—if it were, the historical society would be supporting it. The point is to give immense power to Bradley Chadwick and his cronies.”

  “Why would Bradley Chadwick and his friends want to have anything to do with whether people in some parts of town paint their house in the original colors?” Susan said, completely confused.

  “Because that’s not at all what they want. They could care less about things like that. They want to keep some of the large estates up on the hill from being broken up into apartments. They’re just rich people wanting to protect the value of their property.” Theresa looked around the Gordons’ large garden and bit her lip. “And Anthony and I are not going to let that happen.”

  Susan understood that a person of principle might feel that way, but why did she get the impression that the issue upsetting Theresa was more personal than she claimed?

  THREE

  “It was wonderful of you to do this for me,” Jed said to Kathleen, flopping down on the couch after seeing the Martels to the Gordons’ front door. “I know I owe you.”

  Kathleen was sprawled elegantly in one of the deep green leather-covered wing chairs that bracketed the living-room fireplace. She opened one eye and squinted across the room to where Jed and her husband sat. “You could become my on-call baby-sitter for the next twenty years,” she mused. “That just might pay me back.” She winked at Susan, who was sitting in the other wing chair. “Although I think it’s Jerry who owes me. He was the one who volunteered us for this cottage party.”

  “I paid. I paid. I listened to half the cranks in town with an enthralled expression on my face.” Jerry got up and headed over to the small bar set up in the corner of the room. “Would anyone like a drink? I think there’s a bottle or two with a couple of inches of something left here.”

  “I’d love some soda,” Jed answered. “With lots of ice, if there’s any. I was so busy I didn’t manage to get a cup of tea all afternoon. And I don’t think I’d better have anything alcoholic. I have a lot to do when I get home.”

  “You have to work tonight?” Susan asked, adding, “I’d love some” when Jerry waved a bottle of white wine in the air.

  “The Haskell project?” Jerry asked Jed, referring to a campaign that was being developed at the advertising agency where he and Jed worked.

  “That and a speech I have to write—I’m talking to the Elks Club tomorrow night.”

  “Can’t you just repeat the speech you gave last week at—what was that group?” Susan asked, accepting the glass Jerry handed her.

  “Church Men United or something like that.” Susan knew that the groups were beginning to run together in Jed’s mind. “And I don’t think I can use the same speech. There are too many people who belong to both groups.”

  “Presidential candidates just have a basic speech that they repeat over and over,” Kathleen commented. “There was an article about it in The New York Times last Friday.”

  “Presidential candidates campaign all over the country. I’m limited by Hancock’s boundaries.” Jed drained his glass and put it down on the coffee table. “I’m beginning to wonder how many ways I can think of to say that the Landmark Commission’s ideas are bad for Hancock without offending anyone.”

  “Why?” Kathleen’s question came out as a yawn.

  “Why what?” Jed asked.

  “Why is the Landmark Commission bad for Hancock?” Kathleen elaborated.

  “Who is on this Landmark Commission, anyway?” Jerry asked, refilling Susan’s glass. “I don’t even remember hearing about them before last spring. Not that I’m all that involved in local politics.”

  “It’s the commission’s ideas that I object to,” Jed said. “Not the commission itself.”

  “What is the commission?” Jerry repeated, resuming his seat.

  “The Landmark Commission is a group that was set up just last year by the town council. They were supposed to investigate the question of whether or not the town of Hancock should declare landmark status on homes and buildings.”

  “This all happened after the Fromer mansion was torn down an
d those six hideous wooden houses put up on the property,” Susan elaborated.

  “I like those houses,” Kathleen protested.

  “They’d look wonderful in California, but there are people who think that they’re out of place in Hancock,” Susan said.

  “In that part of Hancock,” Jed added.

  “Yeah. The rich part. Up there on the hill with all the historic mansions. And the mansions that are something less than historic,” Jerry said. “There probably isn’t an estate up there that would sell for less than two million—even these days.”

  “The destruction of the Fromer mansion really was a loss to the town,” Jed explained. “It was built in the 1850s on land that had been settled by the Fromers in colonial times. There’s reason to believe that the founding fathers of Hancock met on the property when they were setting the boundaries of the town back around the time of the Revolutionary War.”

  “You can tell he’s running for office,” Susan said to Kathleen. “Only candidates and characters in fifth-grade plays talk about our founding fathers.”

  “You’re probably right,” Jed agreed. “The idea of setting up a Landmark Commission was inspired by the loss of an irreplaceable bit of Hancock history. There was no intention of taking away the rights of home owners or prohibiting developers from making an honest living.”

  “But the people who live in the house behind us wanted to sell their home to a developer and then subdivide, and they weren’t allowed to—and that was before there was any talk about the Landmark Commission,” Kathleen protested. “And their house was built in the fifties anyway.”

  “They weren’t allowed to subdivide that property because of the zoning rules around here. I don’t think the Fromer mansion episode had anything to do with zoning,” her husband explained.

  “No, it didn’t have anything to do with zoning. Although Hancock has pretty strict zoning laws, and that’s one of the reasons given by opponents of the Landmark Commission for why things don’t have to be changed. There are also sites already protected by state and federal landmark status.”