Denim And Lace. Diana Palmer

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       CHAPTER FOUR

      AS BESS EXPECTED, there was a crowd at the simple graveside service, but it wasn’t made up just of friends and neighbors. It was a press holiday, with reporters and cameras from all over the state. On the fringe of the mob Bess caught a glimpse of Elise Hollister, stately and tall, standing with her three sons. She caught the older woman’s eye, and Elise smiled at her gently. Then, involuntarily, Bess’s eyes glanced at Cade. He looked very somber in a dark suit, towering over his mother and his brothers, Gary and Robert. Red-haired Rob was outgoing, nothing like Gary and Cade. Gary was bookish, and kept the accounts. He was a little shorter than Cade, and his coloring was lighter and he was less authoritative. Bess turned her attention back to what the minister was saying, aware of Gussie’s subdued sobbing beside her.

      The cemetery was on a small rise overlooking the distant river. It was a Presbyterian church graveyard with tombstones that dated back to the Civil War. All the Samsons were buried here. It was a quiet place, with live oaks and mesquite all around. A good place for a man’s final resting place. Frank Samson would have approved.

      “My poor Frank,” Gussie whimpered into her handkerchief as they left the cemetery. “My poor, poor Frank. However will we manage without him?”

      “Frugally,” Bess said calmly. Her tears had all been shed the night before. She was looking ahead now to the legal matters that would be pending. She’d never had to cope with business, but she certainly couldn’t depend on Gussie.

      She helped her mother into the limousine and sat back wearily on the seat as the driver climbed in and started the engine. Outside, cameras were pointed in their direction, but Bess ignored them. She looked very sophisticated in her black suit and severe bun atop a face without a trace of makeup. She’d decided early that morning that the cameras wouldn’t find anything attractive in her face to draw them to it. They didn’t either. She looked as plain as a pikestaff. Gussie, on the other hand, was in a lacy black dress with diamonds glittering from her ears and throat and wrists. Not diamonds, Bess reminded herself, because those had already been sold. They were paste, but the cameras wouldn’t know. And Gussie had put on quite a show for them. She didn’t look at her mother now. She was too disappointed in the spectacle she’d made of their grief. That, too, was like Gussie, to play every scene theatrically. She’d left the stage to marry Frank Samson, and that was apparent, too.

      “I don’t want to sell the house,” Gussie said firmly, glancing at her daughter. “There must be some other way.”

      “We could sell it with an option to rent,” Bess said. “That way we could keep up appearances, if that’s all that matters to you.”

      Gussie flushed. “Bess, what’s gotten into you?”

      “I’m tired, Mother,” Bess replied shortly. “Tired, and worn-out with grief and shame. I loved my father. I never dreamed he’d take his own life.”

      “Well, I’m sure I didn’t either,” Gussie wailed.

      “Didn’t you?” Bess turned in the seat to stare pointedly at the smaller woman. It was her first show of spirit in recent memory, and it almost shocked her that she felt so brave. Probably it was the ordeal of the funeral that had torn down her normal restraint, she thought. “Didn’t you hound him to death for more jewels, more furs, more expensive vacations that he couldn’t afford in any legal way?”

      The older woman turned her flushed face to the window and dabbed at her eyes. “What a way to talk to your poor mother, and at a time like this.”

      “I’m sorry,” Bess murmured, backing down. She always backed down. It just wasn’t in her to fight with Gussie.

      “Really, Bess, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” Gussie said haughtily.

      “I’m worried about how we’re going to pay those people back what they’ve lost,” Bess said.

      Gussie’s eyebrows lifted. “Why should we have to pay them back?” she exclaimed. “We didn’t make them invest. It was all your father’s fault, and he’s dead.”

      “That won’t make any difference, don’t you see?” Bess said gently. “His estate will be liable for it.”

      “I don’t believe that,” her mother replied coolly. “But even if we are liable, your father had life insurance—”

      “Life insurance doesn’t cover suicide.” Bess’s voice broke on the word. It still hurt, remembering how it had happened, remembering with sickening clarity the bloodstained carpet under her father’s head. She closed her eyes against the image. “No insurance does. We’ve forfeited that hope.”

      “Well, the lawyer will handle it,” Gussie said. “That’s what he gets paid for.” She brushed lint off her jacket. “I really must have a new suit. I think I’ll go shopping tomorrow.”

      Bess wished, for an instant, that she was a hundred miles away. The grief was hard enough to cope with, but she had Gussie, as well. Her father had managed his flighty wife well enough, or at least it had seemed so to Bess. She had been protected and cosseted, just like Gussie. But she was growing up fast.

      Since they had to talk to their attorney, Bess asked the driver to drop them by the lawyer’s office on the way home. They could get a cab when they were through, she said, wondering even then how she’d pay for it. But the driver wouldn’t hear of it. He promised СКАЧАТЬ