“What would you have done?” Matt was a little annoyed. But then, Matt had the reputation of being the crew’s straight arrow, and probably deserved it.
“I’d have avoided using a real case in the first place. Some lawyers spend their lives looking for trouble they can profit on. Failing that, I’d probably have let the sim go on — and kept an eye out for anyone trying to use information I hadn’t given them,” Leif said.
“Not so easy to wait for somebody to trip up with a bunch of lawyers and a bank breathing down your neck.” Matt scowled. “Not that you’d know how that feels.”
“Hah! Maybe I don’t have to worry about money, but I’ve had lawyers after me before for various things,” Leif replied, stung. “And you know it. I’m a fat lawsuit target. Being rich isn’t always a bowl of cherries all the time.”
“No, especially not if it means getting killed.” Matt frowned, obviously thinking about the case behind the mystery sim he’d been playing in. “It’s weird to think a girl actually died the way I heard about it in the sim.”
Leif looked at him knowingly. “And you’d like to find out more.”
“Maybe,” Matt admitted.
Leif’s smile grew broader. “So what brings you to Uncle Leif instead of an information-meister like David Gray?”
“Apparently asking questions about the case on the Net starts somebody’s spiderwebs jangling,” Matt said. “I figure the last thing my folks want to see is a ‘cease and desist’ letter from some lawyer.”
“And instead, you figure on checking out my knowledge of society gossip and scandal — even though the story may turn out to be ancient.” Leif couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Guess I should be touched by your faith in me. But I warn you — even I get a little hazy once we get before the Girl on the Red Velvet Swing.”
Matt blinked. “The who?”
Leif sighed. “Sorry. Just showing off. It was a primo scandal in its day. All the elements — a showgirl turned society bride, fooling around with a famous society architect. Her husband was a rich psycho who shot the architect dead in front of a crowd — and still got off, thanks to his family’s money.”
“And this was when?”
“The Stanford White killing goes back to 1906. His killer, Harry K. Thaw, enjoyed catered meals from the best restaurant in New York City while he was in jail. He spent less than ten years in various mental institutions — and lived until 1947.”
“And how is this useful?”
Leif felt his face getting warm. “I told you I was showing off.”
Matt simply shook his head. “Let’s hope the death of this girl is a little more recent.” He began reciting to Leif the details he’d collected as Monty Newman.
“Priscilla Hadding.” The words burst out after Leif had listened for only a couple of minutes, interrupting Matt’s account. “It happened over in Delaware. Big news at the time. She belonged to an old-line society family. Got killed right before the debutante ball.” He nodded. “The police never figured out who dragged her to her death.”
“How long ago was this?” Matt wanted to know. “Delaware isn’t all that far away. And if a big political name was also attached to the case, it wouldn’t have just faded away.”
“This is Washington,” Leif reminded him. “Lots of scandals under the bridge since the Hadding case.”
He squinted up at the ceiling, trying to get his dates straight. “It happened way before we were born. Got to be more than forty years, now.” Bringing his gaze back to Matt, Leif shrugged. “Call it a lost chapter of the Callivant Curse.”
3
“The Callivant Callivants?” Matt asked numbly. Of course he knew the name. The Callivants were one of America’s great political dynasties, up there with the Tafts of Ohio and the Kennedys of Massachusetts.
Like the Tafts and Kennedys, the Callivants had given the nation senators and congressmen. Unlike those other dynasties, the Callivants had never succeeded in reaching the White House. Steve Callivant, the candidate the family had been grooming, had died in the Gulf War. His brother Will, a decorated veteran, had entered presidential primaries — and perished when his campaign bus overturned. The youngest brother, Martin, made a stab at the next presidential election cycle — only to have his bid cut short by a terrorist bomb.
The politics of tragedy seemed to dog the Callivants. Attempting to hide the effects of a stroke, Senator Walter Callivant had tried the experimental Patel Procedure. The controversial treatment had failed disastrously, leaving the senator wheelchair-bound. Riding on a wave of sympathy both for the senator and over Martin’s assassination, Walter’s son, Walter G. Callivant, had moved into his father’s Senate seat.
Matt had been aware of some of the media coverage there. Walter G. had turned out to be a patch of low comedy in the family tapestry. Although he tried to distinguish himself with the middle initial, people always called him Junior — or worse, Callivant Lite. He’d ended up a one-term wonder after six years of providing all too much material for the late-night comics.
Still, the Callivants came and went to their compound on the outskirts of Wilmington, pulling strings in Delaware’s state capital, Dover…and also in Washington. A new generation of Callivant cousins had provided a couple of promising young congressmen.
Callivants were always generous with their celebrity for charitable causes — the more glittering the party, the better. They could be depended upon to attend society shindigs, and always, always for political performances — especially ones commemorating the family’s honored dead.
How could a Callivant have been involved in the death of this girl — what was her name? Priscilla Hadding?
When Matt asked, Leif gave him another shrug. “As the cops say, she was last seen in the company of Walter G. Callivant.”
“The senator?” Matt couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“His election was well off in the future at that time,” Leif explained. “We’re talking early 1980s, here. Walter G. was busy squeaking through prep school with a gentleman’s C average. Silly — that, by the way, was Priscilla’s personal choice for a nickname — was debating whether to spend her senior year abroad.”
“So they were just about our age when this happened.” To Matt, the story seemed weirder and weirder.
“Yep. The night Priscilla Hadding disappeared, there was a big end-of-school party. Half the rich kids from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia — and D.C. — put in an appearance. It was on the back forty of somebody’s estate. There was a big bonfire, lots of kids paired off, and apparently, people brought in lots of refreshments.” Leif’s face twisted. “I’ve been to parties like that. ‘Party’ is putting it very politely. ‘Drunken brawl’ might come closer. If Silly Hadding was last seen with Walter G., depend on it that the eyewitnesses had pretty blurry vision. Anyway, according to the papers of the day, the witnesses disagreed on the time, the place, and how the two kids were getting along. Conspiracy theorists like to think it was a smoke screen engineered by the all-powerful Callivant family.”
Leif laughed. “Others think it’s just another campaign in the secret war against the Callivants. The Invisible Masters of Evil killed Will and Martin, crippled Walter Senior, and tried to smear Walter G.”