Free Slice and Dice by Ellen Hart Page B

company. When Paul was two, they moved into a new house, a mansion really. Wayne built it for them. It was on the other side of the lake from my parents ‘summer home. Very ritzy. They hired a maid and a cook and a guy to keep the grounds. Wayne was vice president of Skeffington Construction by then. He’d helped the company branch off into some highly lucrative product development. I don’t remember now what it all was, but Wayne was a natural at business. When Paul was three, Alan Skeffington died, leaving the company to Wayne and Pepper. Wayne immediately renamed it Buckridge Construction. I guess I understood, although Pepper didn’t. She would have preferred him to keep her father s name on the business.
     
    M:
Wayne must have been thrilled.
     
    Boland:
Yeah, I guess so. But it was hard to tell by then. He was drinking too much. I guess you could say his unhappiness was beginning to show. What made it worse was that Pepper had become a full-fledged hypochondriac. I figured it was her way of getting his attention, but actually she always was a hypochondriac, even when we were kids. She’d get a cold and have to go to bed for two weeks. But by her midthirties, she was sure she had cancer, diabetes, a bad heart, walking pneumonia, and just about every other malady known to modern man.
     
    M:
Was she really sick?
     
    Boland:
If you d asked me then, I would have told you it was all an act. But, in the end, it turned out she wasn’t making it up. Something was wrong with her, all right. She went to dozens of different doctors to find out why her body didn’t feel right. I mean, the tests that woman had — it was enough to curl your socks. And the money it cost. But nobody could help.
     
    M:
Maybe it was psychosomatic.
     
    Boland:
You mean, it was all in her head?
     
    M:
No, it was real, but it was caused by her emotions. It sounds like her husband wasn’t around much. She couldn’t have felt very loved or supported.
     
    Boland:
(Shrugs) Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s too bad, really. They started out with so much going for them. But I’m not sure Wayne knew how to be happy. Maybe that’s why he was crying the night before he got married. Maybe he knew he was going to make Pepper miserable, ruin both their lives.
     
    M:
If he was that prescient, he was an unusual man.
     
    Boland:
Pardon me?
     
    M:
Tell me, Mr. Boland, how did Pepper Buckridge die?
     
    Boland:
Well, I was on the road at the time, so I heard about it later from Wayne. He was pretty torn up. Seems she got real sick one night. She’d been bedridden off and on for many months, but the last week was the worst. That night she had some sort of crisis. Stomach pains. Vomiting. I don’t know what else. Wayne rushed her to the emergency room and the doctors did what they could, but she died in his arms. I arranged most of the funeral. Wayne was too upset. He said he blamed himself for her death. He should have been more sympathetic, should have helped her find a specialist who could really get to the bottom of her medical problems. It was just that he was so tired out by her continuous complaints. I think after a while, he just tuned her out.
     
    M:
What happened to Paul while all this was happening?
     
    Boland:
He was pretty small. When Pepper was no longer able to care for him, she hired a nanny. The woman didn’t last a month. She hired a couple more, but nobody worked out. So I guess between the cook the maid, and the groundsman, little Paul was looked after. Every time I was there he always seemed happy enough.
     
    M:
How did Wayne meet his second wife?
     
    Boland:
Connie? She was one of the housemaids and then, later, the cook. She came to work for the family in ‘61, right after they moved into the new house. I doubt she was more than twenty-two or twenty-three at the time, although she had a son who was around seven. If I’m not mistaken, Nathan was five years older than Paul.
     
    M:
So Nathan was Constance s natural son but