Kendall wished that Marc could have been in Paris with her to share her triumph, but his brokerage house had refused to give him the time off.
89 When the crowd had left, Kendall went back to her office, feeling euphoric. Her assistant said, ' letter came for you. It was hand-delivered.' Kendall looked at the brown envelope her assistant handed her, and she felt a sudden chill. She knew what it was about before she opened it. The letter read: Dear Mrs. Renaud, I regret to inform you that the Wild Animal Protection Association is short Of funds again. We will need $100,000 immediately to cover our expenses. The money should be wired to account number 804072-A at the Cr6dit Suisse bank in Zurich. There was no signature. Kendall sat there, staring at it, numb. It's never go M*g to stop. The blackmail is never going to stop. Another assistant * came hurrying into the office. '! I'm so sorry. I just heard some terrible news.' I can't bear any more terrible news, Kendall thought. ' ... what is it?" was an announcement on Radio-T616 Luxembourg. Your father is ... dead. He drowned.' It took Kendall a moment for it to sink in. Her first thought was, I wonder what would have made him prouder? My success or the fact that I'm a murderer?
Chapter Ten
Peggy Malkovich had been married to, Woodrow '' Stanford for two years, but to the residents of Hobe Sound, she was still referred to as 'that waitress'. Peggy had been waiting on tables at the Rain Forest Grille when Woody first met her. Woody Stanford was the golden boy of Hobe Sound. He lived in the family villa, had classical good looks, was charming and greganous, and a target for all the eager debutantes in Hobe Sound, Philadelphia, and Long Island. It was therefore a seismic shock when he suddenly eloped with a twenty-five-year-old waitress who was plainlooking, a high-school dropout, and the daughter of a day laborer and a housewife. It was even more of a shock because everyone had been expecting Woody to marry Mimi Carson, a beautiful, intelligent young heiress to a timber fortune who was madly in love with Woody. As a rule, the residents of Hobe Sound preferred to gossip about, the affairs of their servants rather than' their peers, but in Woody's case, his marriage was so. outrageous that they made an exception. The 91 information quickly spread that he had gotten Peggy Malkovich pregnant and then married her. They were quite sure which was the greater sin. ' God's sake, I can understand the boy getting her pregnant, but you don't marry a waitress!' The whole affair was a classic case of Wja vu. Twenty-four years earlier, Hobe Sound had been rocked by a similar scandal involving the Stanfords. Emily Temple, the daughter of one of the founding families, had committed suicide because her husband had gotten the children's governess pregnant. Woody Stanford made no secret of the fact that he hated his father, and the general feeling was that he had married the waitress out of spite, to show that he was a more honorable man than his father. The only person invited to the wedding was Peggy's brother, Hoop, who flew in from New York. Hoop was two years older than Peggy and worked in a bakery in the Bronx. lie was tall and emaciated, with a pockmarked face and a heavy Brooklyn accent. ''re getting' a great girl,' he told Woody after the ceremony.
"I know,' Woody said tonelessly. ' take good care of my sister, huh?"
"I'll do my best.". Cool.' An unmemorable conversation between a baker and the son of one of the wealthiest men in the world. 92 Four weeks after the wedding, Peggy Jost the baby. Hobe Sound is a very exclusive community, and Jupiter Island is the most exclusive part of Hobe Sound. The island is bordered on the west by the Intercoastal Waterway and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean. It is a haven of privacy - wealthy, selfcontained and protective, with indife police per capita than almost any other place in the world. Its residents pride themselves on being understated. They drive Tauruses or station wagons, and own small sailboats, an eighteen-foot Lightning or a twenty-four-foot Quickstep. If one was not born to it, one had to earn the right to be a member of this Hobe Sound community. After the marriage between Woodrow Stanford and ' waitress',' the burning question was, what were the residents going to do about accepting the bride into their society? Mrs. Anthony Pelletier, the doyenne of Hobe Sound, was the arbiter of all social d. isputes, and her devout mission in life was to protect her community against parvenus and the nouveaux riches. When newcomers arrived at Hobe Sound and were unfortunate enough to displease Mrs. Pelletier, it was her custom to have delivered to them, by her chauffeur, a leather traveling case. It was her way of informing them that they were not welcome in the community. 93 Her friends delighted in telling the story of the garage mechanic and his wife who had bought a house in Hobe Sound. Mrs. Pelletier had sent them her ritual traveling bag, and when the wife learned its significance, she laughed. She said, "If that old harridan thinks she can drive me out of this place, she's crazy!' But strange things began to happen. Workmen and repairmen were suddenly unavailable, the grocer was always out of items that' she ordered, and it was impossible to become a member of the Jupiter Island Club or even to get a reservation at any of the good local restaurants.
And no one spoke to them. Three months after receiving the suitcase, the couple sold their home and moved away. So it was that when word of Woody's marriage got out, the community held its collective breath.
Excommunicating Peggy Malkovich would also mean excom- municating her popular husband. There were bets being quietly, made. For the first few weeks, there were no invitations to dinners or to any of the usual community functions. But the residents liked Woody and, after all, his grandmother on his mother's side had been one of the founders of Hobe Sound. Gradually, people started inviting him and Peggy to their homes.