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
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
“And what do you think?” Matt asked.
“I don’t like either extreme. Enough strange, sad, and stupid things happen to any family over generations. When the family is famous, the media tends to play up those events. On the other hand, rich families can afford the kind of lawyers who lay down a smoke screen as a matter of course. And a lot of police forces aren’t exactly gung- ho about investigating prominent pillars of the local community.”
“What did Walter G. have to say?”
“When the cops finally talked to him — he was in a private hospital for shock or a hangover or something — Walter G. wasn’t very helpful. He said he and Silly made out a little — they were a semicouple, as I recall — then they split up, and young master Callivant drove home.”
“He didn’t take Silly — the girl — home first?” Matt felt silly, using that upper-crust nickname. And he couldn’t believe that any boy would leave a girl stranded at a party, no matter how ritzy.
“Apparently, she wanted to stay.” Leif turned to his friend with an odd expression on his face. “You’ve never been to that kind of party — and you should probably be glad. The rich really are different, in one way especially. They’re very fond of getting their own way. The two kids may have had an argument, and one or the other went storming off. It could even have happened the way young Callivant told it. The girl could have dismissed him. ‘Run along, now. I’ve got other fish to fry.’”
“You make it sound
“I told you,” Leif said, his mocking smile completely gone. “Being rich is no bowl of cherries.”
He lounged back on his uncomfortable-looking seat. “So, now that you’ve gotten some of the gory details — and a whole lot of conjecture — what are you going to do with the information?”
Now it was Matt’s turn to shrug. “I have no idea,” he confessed. He held up his hand. “No. One thing I do know. I won’t be detecting very much in that sim, unless the player who’s been snooping around confesses to Ed Saunders.”
“I hope you’re not holding your breath on that possibility,” Leif told him. “Otherwise, you’ll end up looking like this.” He frowned for a moment in thought, then his face turned bright blue. It was one of the joys of being on the Net — virtual special effects on command.
“You don’t think the hacking will stop?” Matt asked.
“Oh, it may stop,” Leif replied. “But I can’t see anyone admitting to it. After seeing what happened to your
