Free Morning Noon & Night by Sidney Sheldon Page A

have been it. They got married in Connecticut the following day. And Kendall’s marriage to Marc gave her happiness she had never known before.
    “You mustn’t let your father bully you,” he had told Kendall. “All his life, he has used his money as a weapon. We don’t need his money.”
    And Kendall had loved him for that.
    Marc was a wonderful husband—kind, considerate, and caring. I have everything , Kendall thought happily. The past is dead . She had succeeded in spite of her father. In a few hours, the fashion world was going to be focused on her talent.
    The rain had stopped. It was a good omen.
    The show was stunning. At its end, with music playing and flash bulbs popping, Kendall walked out onto the runway, took a bow, and received an ovation. 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.
    When the crowd had left, Kendall went back to her office, feeling euphoric. Her assistant said, “A 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 ProtectionAssociation 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 Crédit Suisse bank in Zurich.
    There was no signature.
    Kendall sat there, staring at it, numb. It’s never going to stop. The blackmail is never going to stop .
    Another assistant came hurrying into the office. “Kendall! I’m so sorry. I just heard some terrible news.”
    I can’t bear any more terrible news , Kendall thought. “What…what is it?”
    “There was an announcement on Radio-Télé 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
    P eggy Malkovich had been married to Woodrow “Woody” 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 gregarious, 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 plain-looking, 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 information quickly spread that he had gotten Peggy Malkovich pregnant and then married her. They were quite sure which was the greater sin.
    “For 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 déjà 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