“Pilot ought to be here waiting,” said Mr. Spence. “That was the deal. I guess I better go look for the guy.” He cast another look at the bar, and set off toward the baggage area and the yellow puddle.
“Well, I don’t see the reason for last-minute changes,” said Mrs. Spence, speaking to the air. Then she fixed Tom with a smile that went all the way to the corners of her sunglasses. “And your mother is Gloria Upshaw, isn’t she?”
“She was Gloria Upshaw,” Tom said. “Before she got married.”
“Such a dear,” said Mrs. Spence.
“Okay, we got it straightened out,” said Mr. Spence. “The pilot’s waiting for us in the Redwing lounge.”
“Of course he is,” said Mrs. Spence.
Mr. Spence lifted his enormous suitcase and began moving toward a door next to the thatch of the bar, and Mrs. Spence muttered something and followed after with her medium-sized suitcase rolling after her handsome legs, and Sarah hugged him while their backs were turned and hit him in the back with her tiny suitcase and whispered, “Don’t mind them too much, please, and
On the other side of the door, black leather couches and chairs had been arranged around marble coffee tables on a thick grey carpet. A waiter in a white coat stood behind a bar on which stood a pitcher of orange juice, a silver coffeepot, and trays of breakfast rolls covered in Saran Wrap.
“Oh, my!” said Mrs. Spence. “Well, I
A tall, well-tanned man in a dark blue uniform set down his coffee cup and stood up before one of the couches. “Spence family?”
The pilot smiled. “There won’t be any problem, Mrs. Spence.” He opened a door beside the bar, and they stepped out into the heat. A sleek grey jet with a heraldic letter R sat on the tarmac a short distance away. “I am Captain Mornay, by the way, but Mr. Redwing’s guests usually call me Ted,” said the pilot.
“Oh, Ted, thank you so much,” said Mrs. Spence, and swept across the tarmac toward the staircase leading up to the open door of the jet.
The interior of the plane matched the Redwing lounge. Grey carpeting covered the floor and bulkheads, and black leather chairs stood around black marble tables. A bar with a steward in a white jacket stood next to a curtained-off galley. On the other side of the bar and galley Tom saw two compartments separated by smoked glass. A door in the rear of the plane opened, and a porter began handing in their suitcases to the Steward, who placed them on shelves at the rear end of the plane and secured them behind a carpeted door.
The steward asked them to choose their seats and fasten their seat belts, and slipped into the galley.
“Well, Tom, I think we’ll sit in this nice little area right here,” said Mrs. Spence, and smiled brightly. She took a seat in the second complement of chairs, looked at Sarah, and patted the chair beside hers. There were three chairs around the black table.
“Tom and I can sit here,” Sarah said. “That way, we’ll practically be at the same table.” She sat in the chair of the first group nearest her mother’s table, and swiveled it around to show how close they were.
Mr. Spence sat down, grunting, and put his cowboy hat on the table. Tom took the chair beside Sarah’s. They all fastened their seat belts. Mrs. Spence pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, and smiled ferociously.
“Only twenty men in America have jets like this,” said Mrs. Spence. “Frank Sinatra has one. And Liberace, I think. Some of the others are showier, but Ralph’s is the most tasteful. I’m sure I’m happier in this jet than I would ever be in Frank Sinatra’s. Or Liberace’s.”
“Oh, I’d like to be Liberace’s private jet,” said Sarah. “I’m sure I’d be happy in a jet where everything was piano-shaped and covered in ermine. Don’t you think that private jets
“I suggest that you learn to like this one.” Her mother’s voice could have shaved a peach. “You’ll be seeing a lot of it.” She swiveled her chair, hitching her skirt even farther up her thighs, and looked back at the rest of the cabin. “Aren’t those little booths cute? I adore those little booths. I can just see Buddy sitting in one of those little booths. Or in the cockpit. Buddy is sort of the pilot type, isn’t he?”
“I can see Buddy piloting the bar,” Sarah said.
“I don’t understand you,” her mother said. “You just say these things.”
“Tom is very high-spirited, mother. He goes on wonderful excursions. He has interesting friends everywhere.”
“Imagine that,” said Mrs. Spence. “Do you think there is any champagne on this flight? I think champagne would be just right, don’t you?”
Mr. Spence pulled in his belly, stood up, and went to the curtained galley.
When a bottle of beer, two glasses of orange juice, and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne sat on the table, Mrs. Spence raised her glass and said, “Here’s to summer!” They all drank.
“Have you known Ralph Redwing long?” Tom asked.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Spence, and “Not really,” said Mr. Spence, more or less simultaneously. They looked at each other with differing degrees of irritation.
“Well, of course, we’ve moved in the same circles ever since Mr. Spence took over Corporate Accounting for Ralph,” said Mrs. Spence. “But we’ve only really become close in the past two or three years. You’d have to say that Buddy and Sarah brought us together, and we’re very happy about that.
“You do all the accounting work for the Redwing Holding Company?” Tom asked.
“Not by a long shot,” Mr. Spence said. “I handle the work for the can company, the real estate holdings, the brewery, a few other odds and ends. Keeps me hopping. Above me, there’s the General Accountant, the man I report to, and then the Vice-President for Accounting, above him.”
“So you do the accounting work relating to Elysian Courts and the old slave quarter?”
Mr. Spence nodded. “It’s all revenue.”
“I never saw any champagne that came in a clear bottle before,” said Mrs. Spence, refilling her glass. “Doesn’t it spoil that way, or something?”
“You might not know this,” Mr. Spence said, “but your grandfather did me a big favor once. Your grandfather is the reason I work for Ralph now.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I come from Iowa, orginally, and Mrs. Spence and I met in college there. When we got married, she wanted to live back on Mill Walk, where she was from. So I came down here and got a job with your grandfather. We had a nice little place out in Elm Cove. In ten years, I was doing about half his total accounting work—your grandfather does everything by the seat of his pants, you know—and we could get our house on The Sevens.”
“One of the oldest houses in the far east end,” said Mrs. Spence.
“Hadn’t been lived in for better than twenty years. Like a museum in there when we moved in. Couple years later, he sold us our lodge—same deal. Sealed up since hell froze over. Anyhow, once we had the lodge, we came in contact a lot more with Ralph and his bunch. And when Ralph dropped into my office one day and said he’d like to give me a job, your grandfather gave me his blessings.” He finished off his first beer while he spoke. “So everything worked out just right, you could say.”
“Didn’t a man named Anton Goetz own that house?”
“Nope. He worked for your grandfather—made a lot of money too! For an accountant, I mean. The actual ownership of the place was held by a shadow corporation that was part of Mill Walk Construction, if you looked hard enough. Same was true of our lodge. Saved a few pennies in taxes that way, I guess.”
“I thought I heard once that Goetz owned the St. Alwyn Hotel,” Tom said.
“He might have said he did, and he might have been listed here and there as the owner, but your grandfather still owns the St. Alwyn. In conjunction with Ralph, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Tom said. “And I guess my grandfather owns part of Elysian Courts.”
“And the old slave quarter. Sure. Way back when, Glendenning Upshaw and Maxwell Redwing pretty much divided up the island. All on the up and up, of course. So Glen and Ralph are pretty much partners in a lot of things these days. There’s a lot of overlap in my work.”
“That’s enough talk about business,” said Mrs. Spence. “I didn’t come on this plane to hear about the slums