Part 3 — The Mink Pocket
Brooke stood at the head table, one hand still reaching for the letter, and Simone held it flat against her chest.
“Mrs. Pell, how would someone get into your late husbands desk?”
“There is only one key,” I said. “Walter kept it in the pocket of my mink coat, sewn into the seam, for safekeeping. Brooke borrowed that coat in February for the children hospital luncheon.”
Brooke went white under the sequins. “Connie, I only wore it for an hour.”
“You wore it all afternoon, dear. And you returned it with the pocket unpicked.”
Douglas finally lifted his head. He looked at his wife the way a man looks at a house after a flood.
“Brooke,” he said, “you told me Dad left a letter.”
“I wanted to give my parents one perfect night!” she cried. “I only meant to borrow it!”
My husband had built every wall of that clubhouse, and in the end it was his old letterhead and a seam in my coat that told on the people who tried to charge it to his name.
Simone checked the founding charter in the club office. She came back with the book in her hands. Account 0012 named me alone as the primary member, and it listed no proxy. A charge over five thousand dollars required my approval in person, exactly as she had said.
The twenty-one thousand three hundred dollar total could not be placed on any Pell account. Simone returned it to the head table.
Gary Vance, to my surprise, paled. He said that Brooke had told him it was authorized, and that he had never imagined it was false. He took out his own card and paid the bill in full, with a three thousand dollar tip for the staff, to be fair.
Lorna asked me, in a small voice, if she might apologize. I told her that I would be glad to hear it on Monday, over tea, when she was sober.
The board met the next week. Brooke was suspended from the club for one year, and Douglas offered to resign in her place. I told him to stay, and to bring his wife to supper on Sunday.
She came. She sat on the edge of the sofa, and she cried over the pearl tea cups.
I took Walters real letter out of the desk and gave it to her to read. It was addressed to me alone. It said, “Connie, you hold the gavel. You always have.”