The Way You Look Tonight (6 page)

‘Why didn’t we, ah, know about this before?’

His brother sighed. ‘Probably because the cops down there were trying to keep a lid on it, hoping to catch the guy before things got any more out of hand. But it seems he outsmarted them
– sent a photo of his handiwork to the local scandal sheet, killed another one, and then the
Courier
ran the damn thing in this morning’s edition. It’ll be coast to coast
by tomorrow.’

‘So . . . who do we call in? Department of Justice?’

‘Absolutely, the FBI, yeah. I’ll tell Hoover to get someone, someone very good, down to the Keys on the next plane.’

‘No, Bobby, you won’t
tell
him. I’ll
ask
him.’

‘Jesus, Jack. Not this again. Who’s Chief Executive, you or Hoover? Fine, he’s FBI Director but you’re the President, for God’s sake!’

His brother reached for the telephone on the coffee table in front of him.

‘I told you before, Bobby, just like I told the Vice-President. I’d rather have that bastard inside the tent pissing out, than outside it pissing in.’ He dialled, and paused a
moment.

‘I’ve got this, Bobby.’

‘You’d better have.’

He hadn’t really expected the
Courier
to run the photo in its original, explicit form but he was pleased at how little they had messed with it. The blade and
most of the handle of the knife had been obscured by a black rectangle, and the eye-socket itself was blanked by a larger circle of white, but you definitely got the general idea, especially when
you read the caption underneath.

He had to laugh. Hadn’t they realised yet why he didn’t give a red cent about fingerprints? Or the knives? As for panicking . . . there was plenty of time for
that. He’d barely gotten started.

He had no interest in looking at the inside pages. This was his story, not theirs, and anyhow they couldn’t even tell it right. ‘Keys Killings’ – it sucked. What a
crappy headline. ‘EYE-SOCKET SLAYINGS’ – couldn’t they
SEE
it? Maybe he’d write them a letter. But that was the
Courier
for you. One of the big boys,
like the
LA Times
or
New York Times
, would be more likely to call it right. He must remember to buy copies from Kmart tomorrow, once the story had been syndicated.

He slid his half-finished breakfast away from him across the diner’s Formica table and yawned. It had been a long night and judging by the lack of any significant police activity along
the early-morning-sunlit Overseas Highway, which ran right across from the customer parking lot, they hadn’t found number four yet.

It couldn’t be much longer, though. He peered out of the restaurant window in the direction of the backwater where he’d left her, half a mile south down the highway just before
the Islamorada Bridge.

Yup. There they were. At least half-a-dozen buzzards, wheeling in the cloudless sky, right above the exact spot. As he watched, he saw one drop out of formation and swoop low down into the
mangroves. Almost immediately, two more followed.

Someone had better find her soon or there wouldn’t be a whole lot left to find.

The screams were bloodcurdling and came from down by the water. They cut like jagged knives through the laughter and chatter further up the beach, and sunglasses glinted and
flashed as people turned their heads towards the sudden disturbance. There were more screams, even louder now, and a long, wailing: ‘
Noooooooo
. . .’

Dorothy turned to Stella, grinning. ‘And
that
is why JFK and Jackie won’t let Caroline and John-John play with Ethel and Bobby’s kids,’ she said. ‘One,
they’re hopelessly outnumbered and, two, Jackie says her children would be safer fooling around in the tiger enclosure at Washington Zoo. Look out, here come Kathleen and Joe. They’re
the eldest and the most dangerous.’

Stella watched as brother and sister whooped past, seawater dripping from their woollen bathing costumes and brandishing enormous water pistols as they ran. ‘Ouch! Hey!’ she cried,
as a jet of water hit her square above one eye. ‘I’ll get you for that!’

The children chased past her, oblivious, onwards up the shelving sand to the two-storey white-painted wooden beach house that stood behind a raft of picnic tables and several fiercely smoking
barbecues.

‘The little darlings,’ Stella snorted, ruefully wiping her eye with the back of one hand. ‘How many of them are there, exactly?’

‘Ethel’s been pushing one out pretty much every year since 1951,’ Dorothy told her. ‘I think even she and Bobby are beginning to lose count. God help them if they ever
have twins. Let’s see . . . Kathleen, Joe, um, Robert . . . her lips silently mouthed the rest of the names, marking them off on one hand and then uncurling the fingers of the other.

‘Yeah, I think that’s all of them,’ she frowned at last. ‘Seven, at the last count.’

‘
Seven?’
Stella repeated in disbelief. ‘But from what I’ve read, Ethel can only be in her early thirties.’

‘Yup, thirty-four last April. Three girls and four boys already. The youngest is Mary – she’s two; three in September.’ Dorothy shrugged. ‘Irish Catholics.
It’s their thing. Ethel’ll be pregnant again by Christmas, I guarantee it.’

Stella turned to take in the scene around her. There were about fifty or sixty people at the barbecue, most standing around on the sand or sauntering down to the ocean, now that Bobby and
Ethel’s brood had stampeded inside behind their two eldest siblings.

She was sure she recognised some of the men, particularly the older ones. ‘Haven’t I seen that man’s picture in the paper?’ she whispered to Dorothy, pointing
surreptitiously.

Dorothy shaded her eyes. ‘You mean the well-fed middle-aged guy in the Hawaiian shirt?’

‘Yes, talking to the tall man in trunks with his back to us.’

‘Ha! I can assure you, Stella, when that tall guy turns around you’ll recognise
him
all right. That’s Ted Kennedy. He’s probably the best-looking man here. The
pork chop he’s talking to is the senator for Massachusetts, Benjamin Smith. Big friend of the family. When Jack won the Presidency two years ago he had to give up his seat in the Senate, of
course. Benjamin took his place, but only to keep it warm for Teddy.’

‘What do you mean, keep it warm?’

‘Teddy was a little too young under the rules to be a senator back then,’ Dorothy explained. ‘But he turned thirty a couple of months back, so he can take over in the
fall.’

‘I see . . . and what’ll become of Mr Seat-Warmer then?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about him. The Kennedys don’t forget their friends.’

Stella took a thoughtful sip of the peach-coloured cocktail a waiter had handed to her when they arrived.

‘They’re a bit like a royal family, aren’t they?’ she said at last.

Dorothy laughed. ‘Exactly! Why do you think we call it Camelot?’

Stella was about to ask more when the tall man in trunks turned around and immediately made eye contact with her. He gave a casual wave and raised his glass, bowing theatrically from a trim,
muscled waist.

She offered a slightly flustered wave back, turning to Dorothy as she did so. ‘Good heavens, you were right, he’s gorgeous,’ she muttered. ‘If he wasn’t a
politician he could be a film star.’

‘He certainly behaves like one, in certain departments,’ the older woman said drily. ‘Total womaniser. See that girl over there in the green headscarf and matching sunglasses?
That’s his wife, Virginia. He’s steadily driving her to drink, poor kid.’

Stella turned away as casually as she could from Teddy Kennedy’s unwavering, knowing gaze. ‘So it’s true then, what I’ve heard? About the Kennedy brothers?’

‘You mean that they all fool around? Sure. It’s just that the papers have made a collective decision not to report it. They love the Camelot image and the happy all-American family
thing, beautiful wives and golden children. Why spoil it for everyone? Anyway, Jeb says most editors honestly believe it’s better to keep the whole Kennedy cheating story under wraps; they
think it’d be unpatriotic to blow the lid on it. Bad for Uncle Sam’s image. Besides – they’re such impressive, upstanding guys in most other ways. Terrific at running the
country, and all that. Taking us into a shining future. Really. Wait ’til you meet Jack and Bobby. Jeb says—’

On cue, Jeb materialised beside them. ‘Dottie, Ethel wants to say hi and she and the guys would like to meet our English rose, too. Come on, girls. Where’s Sylvia?’

Dorothy nodded towards a riotous group of mostly very young men further down the sands. ‘Playing beach baseball with the boys.’

‘Oh . . . OK, we’ll leave her to it then. C’mon.’

But Stella was rooted to the spot. ‘Jeb . . .’ she said hesitantly. ‘By
the guys
, you don’t mean . . .’

He grinned and took her arm. ‘I most certainly do. Stella, come and have a drink with the two most powerful men on the planet.’

Jeb and Dorothy led her through a light screen of Secret Service men, incongruous on the beach in their dark suits and neckties, forming a loose circle at a respectful distance
around the largest of the charcoal grills.

As they got closer, Stella could hear the President and his brother quarrelling over how much longer the T-bones needed on the giant griddle. There were at least twenty enormous steaks smoking
and spitting furiously over the coals.

‘Take ’em off
now,
Jack – we’ve turned them twice and they’re done already. Jackie, tell him!’

‘Don’t drag me into this, Bobby,’ the First Lady said over her shoulder, breaking off from conversation with her sister-in-law. ‘It’s not even your barbecue. You
two put yourselves on cookhouse fatigue, nobody asked you, so just see it through and stop squabbling like babies.’ She turned back to Ethel. ‘Sorry, Eth. As I was saying, I felt the
only way I could possibly deal with it was to— oh my word,
Dorothy
!’

Dorothy stepped forward across the sand, smiling broadly. ‘Hi Jackie – Ethel. We thought now might be a good moment to call time on the grand chefs so we can all actually get
something to eat.’

Jeb peered over his wife’s shoulder at the griddle behind the three women. ‘Those steaks look done to me, guys. I’m pretty sure the cow’s dead.’

Bobby turned round gratefully. ‘Now that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say, Jeb. Hear that, Jack? You’ve been outvoted and you’ve chargrill-filibustered
yourself into the bargain.’ He clapped his hands and called out to the nearest partygoers. ‘Chow down, everyone! We’re serving up here! Get in line, folks! And Jack, take that
ridiculous chef’s hat off. It does nothing for you. You look like Macy’s Chubby Christmas Cook.’

The brothers had been busy for twenty minutes now, serving undeniably blackened T-bone steaks to a line of people clasping paper plates and plastic cutlery. Stella had not been
properly introduced to them yet, other than Jeb’s ‘this is our English rose I was telling you about, guys’, which had elicited friendly waves from both men before they were
swamped by hungry guests.

She watched them covertly as Jeb stood patiently in the queue for food, clutching plates for himself, Dorothy and Stella.

She tried and failed to picture the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, standing on a beach in bare feet and shorts, laughing and trading friendly insults with a gaggle of barbecue guests
as he served them their lunch.

In fact, she couldn’t imagine the patrician Macmillan going within a hundred miles of a barbecue. At this very moment, five hours ahead of US Eastern Time, the Prime Minister was probably
in his Pall Mall club, or Downing Street, or perhaps his weekend grace-and-favour country home, Chequers. He’d be comfortable in Sunday tweeds, puffing on his briar pipe, and nursing a
pre-dinner brandy and soda while perusing
The Sunday Times
over half-moon reading glasses.

Hardly Camelot.

The President was barely twenty years younger than Macmillan, Stella calculated, yet the American and British leaders belonged to completely different periods. Macmillan still had one foot in a
vanished age. JFK stood squarely in the present, and was stepping confidently into the future.

He had, as did his brother, what looked to Stella like an all-over tan, a flat stomach and even now, in his mid-forties, a boyish face. He could be, she thought, a sports hero, even a film star.
No wonder women adored him. In fact, if she was honest, she herself could imagine –

A voice jolted her out of the beginnings of a rather pleasant day-dream.

‘Would you just look at those two! For heaven’s sakes, this isn’t even their barbecue!’

Stella turned to find a pretty, petite woman in jeans and pale blue sweatshirt standing next to her, extending a slim hand.

‘Ethel Kennedy,’ she said. ‘I’m Bobby’s wife. You’re Stella, the Rockfairs’ English rose, right?’

Stella laughed, offering her own hand. ‘Are all English girls described as roses here in America?’

‘Hey, don’t go complaining about it. We can call you stinkwort if you’d prefer.’

Stella laughed again. ‘No, rose is fine with me, Mrs Kennedy.’

‘I just told you, it’s Ethel. Dorothy said you were the formal type.’

The older woman nodded back towards her husband and brother-in-law, who were now arguing about how many fresh steaks should go on the griddle.

‘I swear, plant those boys anywhere and they just can’t help themselves trying to take everything over and run it all. But you’ll meet with them later. In the meantime, tell me
about yourself. Jeb says you’re here to study for your Master’s at Smith. What subject?’