The Wicked Wife (Murder in Marin Book 2) (8 page)

Better still, it made Sylvia a bit of a local celebrity and earned her the status to attend such exclusive gatherings as this informal welcoming event introducing the enchanting and internationally celebrated supermodel to Peninsula society.
 

Best of all, Sylvia had a love of people. Their lives, their hopes and disappointments were for her an endless source of fascination. She earned nothing for her columns, but loved it all the same.

Just a few days before the gathering at the Adams’ home, William’s “get to know Willow,” event had grown from forty invitees to nearly one hundred.
 

That, of course, did not bother Willow in the least.

Everyone in Belvedere society had an opinion about Willow and William as a couple, regardless of whether or not they had personally met the internationally recognized model. Someone famous enough to have graced the cover of
People,
and who lent her celebrity to the best selling perfume in San Francisco, New York, Paris, and Hong Kong was bound to generate both excitement and interest.
 

Willow and William were Topic Number One, be it at any of the two local yacht clubs—the St Regis in Belvedere, and the Corinthian, on Main Street in downtown Tiburon—to the local choral society, the many local church social groups, or the BWPL—Belvedere Waterfront Preservation League.
 

So, naturally it was a story that demanded the attention of Sylvia and her popular column.
 

As Rob suggested, Sylvia quickly got busy gathering quotes, beginning with one of the grand dames of Peninsula society: Pamela Botherton, the longtime wife of Marin County Superior Court judge, Peter Botherton.
 

Pamela took a few moments to collect her thoughts. In fact, just two nights before, she had asked her husband, “Peter, what in the world is William Adams doing with that Willow Wisp woman?”

Peter, who thought that neither Adams social nor love life were any of his concern, shrugged, mumbled something unintelligible, and went back to his reading.
 

Pamela was annoyed, but not at all surprised. Throughout the year, she dragged Peter from one charity event to another. His level of disinterest was unchanged, regardless of the attendees. He only came to life if a fellow member of the bar was in attendance, and the conversation turned to the outcome of something, like the property dispute adjudicated in the case of Wilkes versus the Town of Tiburon. Otherwise, he mostly hid in the shadows, attending to matters through his iPhone, in spite of his wife’s insistent complaints that “he spends more time with that phone of his than he does with me!”

Sylvia’s interview finally gave Pamela the perfect podium to air her views on the matter. Tilting her head back thoughtfully, she responded, “Well, Sylvia, off the record, of course, I find it all a bit disturbing. Could there be two more different people than William Adams and this Willow Wisp? He and Fran were pillars of this community, very active in the BWPL and other worthy causes. I simply can’t imagine what poor Fran would have thought about all this. She had such an engaging intellect. This Wisp girl is just as vacuous as her silly name. She might be a fashion icon, but I can’t imagine that she’s anything more than an arm charm to William, and I shudder to think of what else.”

 
Pamela’s pronouncement upon Willow’s character and her easy dismissal of Willow and William’s relationship gave Sylvia nothing she could use for her column anticipating the superstar’s introduction to Peninsula society. After an awkward silence, Sylvia gently prodded Pamela, “So, should I say that you’re looking forward to seeing Willow and William as a couple for the very first time?”

Pamela took a few moments to consider this created quote and then nodded resignedly. “Yes, Sylvia, that would be just fine.”

With the three other women at the top of Peninsula society’s food chain—Cynthia Buckley, Vivian Green, and Julia Hassie—Sylvia’s interviews unfolded in a similar fashion: “Outrageous! Imprudent! Questionable!”
 

All these quotes were softened to now read “Exciting! Imaginative! Refreshing!”

Sylvia had known all four of the women to have occasionally sharp tongues and cold hearts, but even she was surprised by the level of social turbulence that William and Willow had unknowingly stirred.
 

Thursday night, Sylvia cobbled together her story. Of all the inventive items she had created in her time writing her
Buzz
and
Talk
columns, she had never had to work so hard to accomplish what she delicately explained to Jack as, “massaging the truth.”

Following Rob’s advice about making the item about the Adams/Wisp party a mix of local comments and information about their two very different careers, Sylvia went online and did some research on Willow’s decade long rise from young runway model to fashion icon.
 

“Wow,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Jack, this kid Willow has had an incredible career! Do you know she was bright enough to get into Marin Academy on a full financial scholarship? Her father, Oscar, is a CPA and works for the California Department of Transportation. Her mother, Gloria, is a teacher and volunteers part time at the Saint Patrick’s Thrift Shop. They both still live in Larkspur, where Willow grew up. Talk about ‘local kid makes good!’ I think that will be my story’s angle. What do you think?”

Getting no response from Jack, Sylvia got up from the kitchen table where she was working and walked into the living room. To her disappointment, her husband had fallen fast asleep in his leather recliner with the Giants baseball game muted on TV and a copy of
University Horizons
magazine spread across his chest.

Despite all of Willow’s accomplishments, Sylvia concluded that Willow’s social standing in Belvedere would hover somewhere between loathed and ignored.
 

Perhaps all she needed was a trusted local friend, Sylvia thought. After all, you can’t blame someone for falling in love with a man as charming, brilliant, and successful as William Adams.
 

And if Willow was a gold digger, as suggested but not explicitly described as such by nearly all of Sylvia’s peninsula society contacts, she was rather unique in that she obviously brings to her relationship with Adams great wealth of her own.
 

Sylvia finished her column and thought she had done quite well with the piece. Let these society women come bearing smiling faces and hidden daggers, she thought. I’ll extend the hand of friendship to a young woman who is going to need all the friends she can get.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Before she called Sylvia, Holly cooked up a story about fact checking one of her recent columns.
 

“I’ve got a reader who sent in a letter, but it was only signed, ‘Tiburon Fan,’ inquiring whether your item concerning the celebration for Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s fiftieth wedding anniversary party that you mentioned in last week’s column was not indeed their sixtieth.”

“Oh no,” Sylvia responded quickly, “I was at the party. It was indeed their fiftieth.”

Holly quickly followed with the actual purpose of her call. “You did a great job on your column this week. It was the perfect lead up to the Adams-Wisp party.”

“Oh, thank you for that, Holly!” Sylvia said. She was pleased to get any feedback at all from the staff of the
Standard
.

“In fact, I’m meeting a friend for lunch tomorrow over in Tiburon, and I was going to ask if you wanted to meet for a cocktail, or coffee, afterward. But then I remembered that you had the party at the Adams’ home.”

“Oh, darn! That would have been fun…Say, I heard through the grapevine that their invitation list had grown from about forty to over a hundred. I don’t think one or two more would make any difference. Why don’t you join me, as the press? The party starts at three. Meet me at my place. You can go up there with Jack and me.”

 
“Wow! I’d love it,” Holly murmured demurely. “Thanks for including me.”

She couldn’t wait to tell Rob that she was now invited to the Adams’ house for their Willow-meets-the-neighbors party.
 

He smiled. “Oh, really? How did you con Sylvia into that?”

“The old ‘fact checking’ call.”

“I wish I had a buck for every time you’ve pulled
that
routine. Anyway, what’s the big deal? Since when are you so star struck?”

“I live in a one bedroom apartment on Caledonia Street in the heart of sleepy Sausalito,” she reminded him. “If I can get myself into a party where one of the world’s wealthiest men is throwing a soirée for his fabulously wealthy and famous girlfriend, I’m going, buster!”

“Don’t count on their handing out bottles of Willow Wisp perfume as party favors.”

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and they are. My Christmas list is long. You know better than most, this Santa is on a pretty tight budget.”
 

“This is where my late, great Uncle Steve would have said, ‘Holly, you’re some piece of work.’”

“Listen, boss man, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.”

In a dramatic departure from so many of her public appearances, Willow decided she’d strike a different pose for this all-important event: humble, down-to-earth Marin County girl, rather than international, high-fashion icon.

On the morning of the event, she had her stylist and makeup artist arrive at her Market Street condominium at eleven o’clock. Thus began the two hours of preparing her to look as she instructed them, “Natural, but stunning.”

It was a demanding role for her to play: that of looking like everyone else, when in beauty and poise she was so much more than any other woman who would be in attendance. The day before, she thought and rethought her outfit. Finally, she settled on a bright orange Valentino lace sheath. It was sleeveless and knee-length with a jewel neckline and pencil skirt.

Four hours later, she was both low key, and picture perfect. No matter what William’s friends might think of their relationship, no one, particularly no man, would come away thinking anything other than, “William Adams is a very lucky man!”

While she prepared, William sent to her iPhone the first three paragraphs of Sylvia Stokes column, “The Belvedere Buzz.” Naturally, Willow was pleased to see what Sylvia had written: