Author's Note: This was a tricky chapter, but I think I executed it well. Thankfully, this wraps up the "who shot Phillip?" storyline quite effectively. Now if the show would just do the same...
Augusta
Disclaimer: It's on all the other chapters.
Chapter Nineteen: A Deal With The Devil
James saw the wheels begin to turn in Alan's head when Dinah walked into the Spaulding dining room with him, smiling as confidently as if she owned the place and everything in it. It was glaringly obvious that none of the Spauldings were exactly happy to have her under their sacred roof, but they certainly knew how imprudent it would be to kick the Mayor's daughter out. An extra chair was added to the table for her, and dinner with the Spauldings went on in its usual style, with all of them keeping totally within their role in the family: the neutral patriarch, the elegant but friendly old maid, the lovebirds in their own little world, the unobtrusive mother-in-law, the hostile son, the clueless little rich girl, and the sympathetic and ladylike mistress of the house. The only things that were different from the first time he had come here were the fact that the Spauldings, with the exception of Gus and Harley who were too absorbed in each other at dinner to notice much else unless someone spoke directly to them, treated him almost as if he were one of the gang and that Lizzie's boyfriend was now Coop, who she seemed much more keen on than she had been on that first one whose name James had never learned.
When Beth passed him the bouillabaisse, James turned to Alan and said, very casually," Might I have a word with you after dinner, Alan? Business." He had said the magic word. Alan Spaulding was a man who had thrown everything away for business more than once, losing love, family, and occasionally sanity in the pursuit of the true American dream: the almighty dollar.
" Certainly. What sort of business are we talking?"
" Intercompany relations."
" What sort of intercompany relations?" Phillip asked sharply.
" I have a proposal for Alan that could prove most...beneficial." Dinah's face was as empty as a lowcountry gambler's, and James knew she was fighting not to laugh right out loud. Beneficial for us, James thought, rectifying the half-lie. Not so beneficial to you, Alan.
You never cease to amaze, darling, Anne interjected lightly. Lying well was the one useful trait our parents gave us, eh?
Right on the mark, sister.
Alan looked politely interested when James met him in his study after dinner. James tried not to smile. He was going to enjoy himself with this.
" How may I help you?" Alan asked.
James stared at him for a moment and then, very deliberately, started laughing. " You're good, Alan. So good I never would have smoked you out on my own, and I'm one of the best at uncovering underhanded things there is, Alan." There was a flicker of something in Alan's eyes for a moment, and that served as yet another nail in the man's coffin as far as James was concerned.
" I beg your pardon" Alan said stiffly. " Everything at Spaulding Enterprises is on the up-and-up, I reassure you. What is this about?"
" Oh, maybe in the company everything's legit, Alan, but not the family. I think you know what I'm talking about."
" I'm afraid I don't, though I'm beginning to think that a spell in Ravenwood might do you some good."
" That's your way, isn't it, Alan? Ship them off to the psycho ward you own to silence them, and if that doesn't work, well, a bullet will usually do the trick. Funny thing, though-neither one worked on Phillip."
" Are you accusing me-"
" No accusation, Alan. I'm telling you. I have proof that you tried to send your son to his other Father. "
" Preposterous!" Alan shouted, but his voice kept on without his mouth moving.
" ...Tell him that I was the one who pulled the trigger, there is going to be absolute hell to pay."
Alexandra's voice came next, though she wasn't in the room. " I would never do that, Alan. You're my brother, we're Spauldings-we're loyal to our own." Dinah came walking into the room, holding up her little tape recorder with her finger on the play button.
" I rest my case," James said with a faintly mocking bow to the Spaulding patriarch.
He was pleasantly surprised to see that Alan did not go to pieces at being uncovered. " Name your price," he said in a controlled voice, pulling out his checkbook. " This can be worked out."
Dinah gave her most carefully calculated manianical laugh. Alan shuddered slightly, but not so much that it would have been noticed had he not been looking for it. Alan Spaulding was a worthy opponent. " You think we can be bought that easily, Alan?" she said contemptuosly, giving him a cutting look, as if he were an idiot. " What d'you think, James? Is anyone ever likely to get dirt this good on Alan Spaulding again?"
" I'd guess not," James said thoughtfully. " No, Alan, we'll be wanting more than money for our silence."
" Name your terms and we can discuss them."
" Discuss!" Dinah screeched, doing a stunning impersonation of madness. The stage had lost a great actress when Dinah Marler didn't go to Broadway or Hollywood. "We're the ones with the dirt, Alan. We're the ones who hold all the cards. Discuss! Oh my God, James, can you believe the nerve of this man? Discuss!"
" What do you want?" Alan snapped, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
" First of all," she said, switching from mananical to sweet as honey in the turn of an eyelash," you won't attempt to frame anyone for Phillip's shooting."
" Done," Alan barked.
" Second," James added," You are going to aid us whenever we ask it of you."
" Third," Dinah chipped in," You are going to respect my father and his authority and not try to undermine him at every opporotunity."
" We'll get back to you later if we happen to come up with any other terms," James finished.
" Take it or leave it,Spaulding," Dinah said, looking as hard as nails.
" Done." To his credit, Alan never flinched.
James smiled politely. " A real pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Spaulding. Shall we, Dinah"? They managed to control themselves until they reached Dinah's place on Fifth Street. Dinah closed the door, then turn to James, grinning.
" That-was-brilliant!" she shrieked, throwing her arms around him.
" No, that wasn't brilliant," he corrected her. " That was bloody brilliant!"
" I never thought I would actually get the chance to blackmail Alan Spaulding," she said, awestruck. " I'm up there with Alexandra and Olivia now. I'm a somebody in this town."
" A somebody?"
" A person who's a public figure-not that I wasn't already, but someone who can blackmail Alan is a lot higher up than Dinah Marler, Slut of Springfield and Con Artist Extraordinare."
" I thought Reva was the self-proclaimed Slut of Springfield."
" Oh, she was twenty years ago, but she's a little out of date," Dinah said with her dazzling mountebank smile. " We young girls have to depose the old worn out matrons every so often."
" Don't let Reva hear you say that," James warned, thinking of the vivacious Lewis matriarch.
" Believe me, I won't. Reva hates me enough as it is, and I'm hoping to be an old worn out matron one day. It gets old, tripping up doctors in hospital beds and bartenders at J. Farley's." She did an awkward sort of twirl and landed on her couch. " Can you believe that we actually pulled this off?"
" No", James admitted. " I was thoroughly expecting things to go totally and completely wrong. "
" You and me both. Do not tell anyone this, but Alan Spaulding scares the shit out of me. He's scared me since I was a little kid. He was the great Alan Spaulding, maker of millions, terror of the town, CEO of Spaulding Enterprises, and I was just a kid being raised in a circus because my mother didn't know how to take care of me." There was a faint shadow of sadness in Dinah's eyes, a sadness he was familiar with from personal expirience, the sadness that came from having one's mother a very vague and slightly impersonal prescence in one's early life.
He heard himself ask her the question Reva Lewis had once asked him. " Do you ever dream about it?"
" Sometimes," she said with a wistful smile. " A lot of times. About that, and Hart and Jeffrey-those are the nightmares with those two in them, Hart covered in blood and telling me he hates me and Jeffrey telling me that I owe him my life and he can take it any time he wants and laughing- but I don't dream about them much anymore. About Mom and Daddy and L. B. and babies I might have had and you."
" Me?"
" Yeah. You're one of four people in this town who doesn't hate my guts. You're the only person in this town who actually likes me as is and isn't related to me by marriage. Do you ever dream about me?"
" Sometimes."
" What kinds of dreams?"
" Nice ones. I've had a few about Christmas Eve...a few very strange ones, one of which included you jumping on the bar at Towers and singing kareoke-"
" At Towers?" Dinah burst into laughter. " Maybe at J. Farley's I could see that-that's a low-rent bar on the rough side of Fifth Street-but Towers? It's the fanciest restraunt in Springfield save the Country Club. Maybe not even excepting the Country Club!"
" I recall that Cassie Winslow was taunting you about something and you told her to kiss your ass and sing on the bar if she had any guts. Cassie wouldn't do it, but you jumped on the bar and started singing."
" What was I singing?"
What Dinah had been singing in his strange dream had been the Sorting Hat's song from the year James was sorted, but he seriously doubted that it would be wise to tell her that right now. " I'm not entirely sure. It was something strange-some sort of Halloween-sounding song."
" Double, double, toil and trouble," she trilled, her eyes alight with merriment.
" What do you dream?"
Dinah's face softened. " I don't remember all of them, but one of them stuck in particular.We were dancing in the snow...don't ask. I've always liked winter...call me morbid."
" I don't see anything morbid about it."
" A lot of people do. You know...everything looks dead during winter. A lot of things do die during winter. That's why I have such an affinity with it." Her face was impassive, but her eyes were desperate. " I'm so sick of being lonely, James. So damn tired of it. I've spent my whole life looking for something or someone who could stop me from being lonely...first it was Hart, but he never really loved me. The only reason he was going to marry me was because he got me pregnant. I lost the baby and lost him to Cassie. Then it was Jeffrey and the whole Princess Cassandra mess...I wanted what she had with Richard and her life, so I was willing to settle for Richard's double and a bottle of blonde hair dye to hold up the deception. Then Edmund came along...God, he was a mistake. He hated me outright, and he was as dangerous to play as I am. You can see that it went nowhere, as I'm with you instead of giving myself airs as Dinah Winslow, Princess of San Cristobel."
" Would you prefer to be Dinah Winslow?"
" No. I wouldn't be Dinah Winslow now if my life depended on it." She kissed him. " I'm not lonely anymore," she whispered, and he understood her perfectly.
" Neither am I," he replied, then kissed her back.
It was past nine the next morning before he made his way back to Company, and it was then that he knew what he had to to. Pretending would get him nowhere-he had seen the tragedy that came from building an imaginary heaven from watching the melodramas that he and Anne called marriages play out.
He was going to tell Dinah everything.
