Free Nothing but Gossip by Marne Davis Kellogg Page B

“Vodka’s in the freezer.”
    Jim poured what sounded like a lot.
    “You’re booked on the three o’clock.”
    “You want me to go
back
to Billings?”
    “Yeah,” Wade said testily. “I want you to go, and I’ll tell you when I want you to come home. Clear?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    I slid around the corner and concealed myself behind an armoire as Wade headed down the hall in the direction of the garage. Once he was gone, I let myself out the front door.
    Richard was sitting about halfway up in Bennett Auditorium listening to the stage manager, lighting designer, and director straighten out the garden scene between Fiordiligi and her sister Dorabella, two of
Così fan tutte
’s three divas. Unlike the new breed of glamour divas, these two were a couple of tanks, but they were the only set of identical twin sopranos in the world, which, according to Richard, was what the guest conductor and director wanted. I slipped in beside him.
    “Hey,” he said, and took my hand. “What a nice surprise. Come on, let’s go grab a sandwich. This is going to drag on for hours.”
    Over a club sandwich and some Jamesons on the rocks at the Cattlemen’s Club, I explained all that had gone on so far.
    “Look at this.” I pulled the Rutherford Oil agenda from my purse. “Alma’s chairman of the Executive Committee. I had no idea of the scope of this proxy fight—it’s unbelievable. Wade filled me in this morning. Initial investment of six billion dollars.”
    “Let me guess,” Richard said. “Mercedes is in favor. Alma’s against.”
    “No. Other way around. Plus, she’s yanked cash patronage from Johnny Bourbon for his ministry unless he divorces Shanna and marries her; from Kennedy McGee for his African resort unless I don’t know what; and from Senator Fletcher because he voted in favor of some environmental bill, which should be no surprise to anybody since environmental protection is his wholeplatform in the first place. They’re all furious at her. And to top the whole thing off, she’s making big gifts to a Wyoming militia group.”
    Richard laughed and shook his head. “She’s a one-woman tsunami. The Leona Helmsley of the Rockies.”
    “Exactly.”
    Richard sipped his Glenfiddich and looked me in the eye. “Speaking of hotels,” he said. “What have you got on for this afternoon?”
    “I was sort of thinking about a small suite at the Grand.”
    He smiled. “Me, too.”

TEN
    W ell, the suite had been a fine idea, but as Richard signed the luncheon check, the hundred-year-old waiter handed him a note from his silver platter that said the Cost twins had thundered back to their hotel like a brace of hysterical elephants and would not return until the wardrobe mistress was replaced.
    “I don’t know how you put up with all these prima donnas,” I said. “I’d just tell them to get a damn grip.”
    “If I can withstand the Moscow State Orchestra getting loaded on vodka and beer during the
Tosca
intermissions at Viareggio,” he said taking my hand—his neck and hands were still covered with red bumps from all the mosquito bites he’d endured in the pit as the star guest conductor at the Puccini Festival—“a couple of fat, spoiled twins from Düsseldorf are nothing.”
    At least we had time for a lingering kiss in the elevator.
    “I’ll see you tonight,” he said.
    *  *  *
    No matter how hard you pray, nor how powerful your connection to God, it is simply not possible to keep a tent standing in Wyoming for more than two minutes. Especially a big tent. So Johnny Bourbon had built a glass-walled, prestressed-concrete tent—The Cowboy Cathedral—to house his ministry safely indoors but also to give it that old-time-religion, tent-crusade ambience. The offices were in a modern building out back. Miles of completely full parking lots surrounded the complex.
    I parked in a tow-away zone by the front door.
    A young man in a powder-blue jumpsuit, white cowboy boots, a white cowboy hat, and