Jill Churchill - A Groom With a View

Shelley grabbed Jane's arm and said, "You're not going in there without me.”

They waited the required five minutes. Jane had made a copy of the information she'd written down. She knocked on the door and they entered without waiting for permission. Jane handed Kitty the copy. "This person called for you, Kitty.”

Kitty only glanced at the note. "Who is this?"

“The society editor of your local newspaper. She wanted to be sure she had your name and Dwayne's spelling right in your wedding announcement.”

Kitty looked at her blankly. "I don't understand."

“Someone called in and gave her the wording for an announcement that you and Dwayne had gotten married this weekend."

“You've made some mistake. Or they did when you called."

“I never contacted them," Jane said.

“Who did?" Kitty asked.

At this point, John Smith interrupted. "You know, I wouldn't be surprised if they record those calls, just to be able to review the information when they write it up. Maybe I should ask for a dupe…”

Kitty looked stricken.

“Do you have something else to tell us?" Smith asked calmly.

Kitty slumped and put her hands to her face, sobbing. Nobody spoke. They waited impatiently for her to pull herself together. Finally she raised her head and said, shakily, "Okay. Okay. I'll tell you the truth. Dwayne and I were in love. We were going to get married. But neither of us had much money and we wanted a house and children and — well, we came up with a plan."

“When?" Smith asked.

“A year ago. I introduced him to Livvy. He pretended to be crazy about her. See, I'd overheard her father harping on her about how it was time to get married and give him grandchildren. We thought — Dwayne and I — that if he managed to get engaged to her, her father would pay him off to get lost. Jack Thatcher is such a damned snob. And Jack did try to get rid of Dwayne, but wouldn't pay enough.”

Jane and Shelley exchanged astonished looks, but kept quiet.

“Dwayne said when it came closer to the wedding, he knew Thatcher would get desperate enough to up the ante."

“And he didn't?" Smith asked calmly.

“No, not enough. So Dwayne and I talked it over last night and decided he'd better go through with the wedding, and then he could divorce her and get a big settlement out of the family."

“There wasn't a prenuptial agreement?" Gus Ambler snapped. Jane hadn't even noticed him sitting in the far corner of the room until he spoke.

Kitty shook her head. "No, Jack wanted one, but Dwayne refused to sign it. He knew they'd cut him off with nothing if he signed anything. That's why he thought up to the very end that Jack would put a stop to the wedding. Then we were going to take the money and get married right away. We'd had our blood tests and the marriage license and everything.”

She paused. They were all silent in the face of this confession.

“I know it wasn't nice," Kitty said, sniffling again. "But we were so desperately in love and so poor. And Livvy didn't really care anything about him. Jane, you heard her. Just before she went down the stairs, she tried to back out of the wedding and her father wouldn't let her. She didn't love him at all and he didn't care anything about her. He was in love with me. It was the only way we could get married and have a house and children. I know you all must think we were awful, but it was the only thing we could do. We had to.”

She looked around for sympathy or understanding and found nothing but perfectly blank expressions.

“I didn't think Livvy would care," Kitty went on. "She didn't want to marry him. You know that, Jane. You heard her say so. Eden heard it, so did the musicians, I imagine. But Dwayne must have told her sometime during the reception dinner that he wanted a divorce right away and was leaving with me. All that prissy repression must have burst the dam. She was furious at being made a fool of and she killed him. I'm not sure she even meant to, really. I can understand. She was so shocked, so embarrassed, and there was that knife we used to cut the ribbons on the presents and…”

She dissolved in tears again. "And now neither of us can have him. I don't know how I'll live without him. I'd rather she'd have killed me.”

If she expected sympathy, she was disappointed. There was an almost palpable air of disgust in the room.

John Smith looked at Jane. "Would you mind finding Mr. Thatcher and asking him to come in here?”

Jane did as she was asked. Jack Thatcher was still in the main room. "Mr. Thatcher, the police would like to speak to you."

“Well, it's about time!" he snarled.

She followed him back to the side room. He started complaining the moment he passed through the doorway, but John Smith cut him off."Mr. Thatcher, did your daughter and Dwayne Hessling have a prenuptial agreement?"

“What? What difference does that make? Of course they did."

“Could I see it?"

“Good God, man! I'm not carrying the damned thing around with me! It's in the safe deposit box at my bank."

“No!" Kitty exclaimed. "He's lying. Dwayne told me he'd absolutely refused to sign anything."

Thatcher turned to her, looking as if he couldn't quite remember who she was. "What on earth would you know about it?" His voice dripped with contemptuous dismissal.

Kitty reeled back as if he'd physically assaulted her.

Mel stepped forward. "Mr. Thatcher, let's go somewhere private and I'll explain it all to you.”

Somehow Mel managed to sweep Shelley and Jane out of the room as well and abandon them the moment the door closed behind them. Thatcher was bellowing that he had the right to know just what the hell was going on and Mel was speaking quietly and leading him up the stairs to the privacy of Thatcher's remote bedroom.

“Can this possibly be true?" Jane said, still stunned.

Shelley headed for the kitchen. "I need coffee. Badly.”

They found the largest cups in the kitchen and filled them to take outside. It was getting dark and something nearby was blooming with a beautiful fragrance. Sitting down on the slight rise where the wedding pictures had been taken a few hours earlier, Shelley finally answered. "If it's true, Kitty and Dwayne are the sleaziest people I've ever known."

“I think I find that easier to accept than you do," Jane admitted. "I haven't liked Kitty since I set eyes on her. But until now, I didn't have any reason to feel that way and felt sort of guilty about having such antipathy for someone I didn't even know."

“I guess if Jack Thatcher can turn up with a prenup contract, that will prove she's lying." Shelley blew across the top of her coffee, trying to get it cool enough to down a big, comforting slug of it.

Jane thought for a moment. "No, not necessarily. It might only prove that Dwayne was lying to Kitty about not signing it."

“Could Dwayne have really and truly had the hots for Kitty?" Shelley asked.

“Sure. Remember Joselyn Wossername? That woman who lived down the block from us years ago?"

“Only vaguely."

“She was downright unattractive," Jane reminded her. "Thin cranky lips, practically no eyebrows, dumpy figure, awful hair. But men were gaga about her."

“But she had a good personality, as I recall.Made them all feel like King of the Mountain. Kitty didn't even have that going for her."

“Still, there's no accounting for other people's taste," Jane said. "If what she's saying is true, they were both such sleazeballs that they're way outside our range of understanding. The whole thing could have been a con job from the very beginning, just like Kitty said. They picked a sheltered, rich, mealymouthed victim who was being pressured to get married and if somebody hadn't bumped Dwayne off, it might have worked.”