Excerpt of The Kill Fee by Laura Van Wormer

Chapter One

"Oh, come on, Uncle Percy!" I cry, lowering my cards facedown to the table with my left hand and slapping my right on my forehead.

"The whole idea of playing hearts, Sally," Uncle Percy quietly explains, "is to maintain one's composure while using a strategy to win."

I sigh as I glance across the card table at my mother and then over at my great-uncle's friend, Mrs. Milner, who offers me a friendly wink. Of course Mrs. Milner has like zero points against her while I'm teetering around with ninety-one, and Uncle Percy has just passed the ace and king of hearts and the queen of spades to me.

"You're just rotten, I tell you," I growl at Uncle Percy, picking up my cards.

Mother laughs, picking up her glass to sip a little wine.

It is Saturday night at the Gregory Home in Castleford, Connecticut. My great-uncle, Percy Harrington, is eighty- four years old, and after a serious fall three winters ago, decided to move here. It is a remarkable institution, the Gregory Home, first started in 1936 by a wealthy industrialist to care for men and women in their later years. The endowment has been very well tended, and over the years the original mansion has evolved into something akin to a lovely feudal village.

The Gregory Home looms large upon a hill, lawns cascading beautifully down in front, and the interlocking buildings extend back and around, encircling to protect its vast network of common areas and residents' rooms, gardens and terraces, and most preciously, of course, its people. Today it can happen that a millionaire lives next door to a person of small means, and yet their quality of life will be indistinguishable. The only prerequisite to living in the Gregory Home, it seems, is to be nice. (As my mother always says, good manners will get you everywhere.)

Uncle Percy resides on the second floor -- the party floor, he says -- and after eating a light supper downstairs in the main dining room, the four of us moved up to the Turner Suite, where residents can privately entertain, to play hearts. My great-uncle is the only surviving Harrington of his generation. His eldest brother, George, was my father's father, the heir who married late in life, blew most of the Harrington family fortune and then blew his brains out in the pool house, leaving everyone somewhat at a loss about how to proceed.

For my father and grandmother, the consequences of my grandfather's behavior meant moving into a small rental house down the road before the banks foreclosed on the estate. For Uncle Percy, it meant watching the only company where he had ever worked, Harrington Fine Printing, abruptly slam the doors in the face of its longtime employees, cart off its presses and equipment and supplies piecemeal, and then auction the building itself in the bankruptcy courts. The huge redbrick building, with its large windows and decorative stonework, is now the home of twenty-four loft apartments. The only trace of my family that can be found is the name of my great-great- grandfather, Horace W. Harrington (the inventor of one of the earliest color-separation processes in printing), on the cornerstone.

Uncle Percy was never quite the same after the bankruptcy. Before the scandal and collapse of Harrington Fine Printing, he had been a rather dashing executive dandy of the old school, Mr. Rah-Rah Princeton, but afterward he became a quiet observer on the city sidelines. He had some sort of minor executive job in Hartford. His wife, it was said, couldn't bear children and so the couple drifted through life in their pretty, little house on Farm Hill Road, always pleasant, always the perfect gentleman and gentlewoman, but never the center of anyone's particular attention.

My father died more than twenty-two years ago, and it was four years later that Aunt Martha fell ill with cancer. Until then Uncle Percy had helped my widowed mother a bit financially, but the demands of his wife's care at home quickly curtailed that, and by the time Aunt Martha died six years later, Uncle Percy was mentally, physically and financially exhausted.

Uncle Percy was a proud man and when he said he was selling the pretty, little house to move into an apartment because, at his age, it was simply the wisest move to make, Mother believed him. But then, over time, Mother put it all together -- the federally subsidized apartment, his never traveling, never buying new clothes, his car barely kept running -- and realized that Uncle Percy had little or nothing to live on but his social security and the odd dollar he took in by addressing wedding invitations in his beautiful hand.

I'm still not sure how Mother convinced him to speak with Margaret Kennerly, the administrator of the Gregory Home. In Uncle Percy's day, the Harringtons were one of the largest benefactors of the Gregory Home, and certainly none of them had ever lived there. But after Uncle Percy's fall, it was evident that his health was at risk, and Mother and I ganged up on him about making a change.

We are so very grateful to the Gregory Home because since Uncle Percy moved in, he has come back to life in a way I never remember him being. Because, you see, living at the Gregory Home is really like living on a grand estate, which is exactly the way of life Uncle Percy had been brought up to expect. He is, in other words, after all these years, living in his natural element.

My mother, the former Belle Goodwin of Newport, often visits Uncle Percy. She also enjoys the atmosphere of the Gregory Home because it is reminiscent of a life that she, too, had been brought up to expect but was denied. Oh, yes, my father was a very good architect, and had, with his in-laws' help, designed and built Mother a beautiful home on the five-acre parcel of the old estate he had managed to hang on to. But then Daddy died so young, and so unexpectedly, and there Mother had been left with two small children and very little insurance. (She also had a brother draining her parents for all they were worth, but that is another story.)

No, I think, looking across the table at my blond (and gray) haired, blue-eyed, genuinely beautiful sixty-year- old mother, she has not had it easy, either.

"Who has the two of clubs?" Uncle Percy wants to know, snapping me out of my contemplations.

"I do," I sigh, tossing it on the table to start the hand. Sometimes I think I am Uncle Percy's favorite niece because I am his only niece.

After I get creamed and thrown out of the game, Uncle Percy asks if perhaps I can look at that letter he mentioned. I tell him sure, get up to pour myself a cup of decaffeinated coffee, retrieve the letter, settle back down at the table and look at all the commotion emblazoned on the envelope. NO SUCH PERSON. RETURN TO SENDER. DECEASED. DEAD-LETTER OFFICE. The letter is addressed to Uncle Percy at the old Farm Hill Road address where he hasn't lived for years and years.

"Our new mailman brought it the other day," Uncle Percy tells me, playing a card. "Nobody seems to know where it's been all this time."

I open the letter. It's dated over two years ago.

Dear Mr. Harrington,

I am writing in regard to the five (5) acres of land you own outside Hillstone Falls, New York. The land trust wishes to explore the possibility of purchasing it from you. There may be many beneficial tax implications, and you will, as well, earn the deepest gratitude of every Connecticut and New York resident wishing to keep our air clear of toxic pollutants, our water clean and our landscape unspoiled.

Please call me at your convenience.

Sincerely yours, I am, Harold T. Durrant President Western Connecticut Land Trust

The address is in Lakeville, a small, picturesque town in northwest Connecticut that has become popular with rather well-heeled New Yorkers.

"Do you know what he's talking about?" I ask my great- uncle. "No," he says, tossing a heart onto Mother's suit of diamonds.

"Darn it," Mother says under her breath with a grimace.

Then she glances over at me, curious about the letter.

"I wonder if you would look into it for me '" Uncle Percy says, craning his neck over his cards to see what Mrs. Milner plays.

"Yes, of course I will." I slide the letter back into the envelope and put it away in my purse. There is a need for discretion. When Uncle Percy came into the Gregory Home, he signed over his assets to them -- which were essentially his social security payments -- to help defray the expenses of caring for him for life. Please understand, I do not wish to cheat the Gregory Home out of their rightful due, but I would like to know what this is all about before Uncle Percy comes forward with a newfound asset.

It's very strange, though. How can this land trust group know about the land, when none of us, including Uncle Percy, have ever heard of it? And if it's true, that there is a piece of the old Harrington empire still in play, who's been paying the taxes on it for all these years?

Mother is thrown out of the game next, so it is down to Uncle Percy and Mrs. Milner. In the next hand, Mrs. Milner has an inexplicable surge of good luck and Uncle Percy goes down. While I somewhat doubt that Mrs. Milner's strategy was quite as miraculous as it seemed, I do not doubt the caliber of a strategy that has nothing to do with cards. Uncle Percy is clearly sweet on her and he has purposely thrown the game to give her pleasure.

We pick up after ourselves and we all walk Mrs. Milner to her room to say good-night. Then Uncle Percy escorts us downstairs in the elevator, and in the lobby the receptionist reminds us to sign out. While Mother walks over to sign the register, Uncle Percy retrieves our winter coats from the closet. With Mother's coat draped over his arm, he helps me on with mine, and says, "Now, Sally, I don't want to conceal anything -- "

"No, I understand," I quickly assure him, turning around. "We'll just scope it out first to see what's what."

"What's what," he repeats. "Exactly. That's what I would like."

"What are you two whispering about?" Mother asks, coming back.

"About how absolutely beautiful you are, my dear," he says, kissing Mother on the cheek and holding her coat out for her to slip on.

I smile, because for a second there I could see in Uncle Percy's eyes a slight resemblance to my father.

"Well, go on, my dears," Uncle Percy says, shooing us on our way.

"Sally has a big day tomorrow and she needs her rest."

"What big day?" I ask, glancing back over my shoulder. He raises a hand to his mouth to loudly whisper, "Lover boy is coming!"

"Mother," I say accusingly, turning around, but before I can find out what she told him, Mother has pushed me out through the automatic front door. As we cross the driveway, I can see through the window that Uncle Percy is laughing and laughing and waving good-night.

"I didn't call him lover boy," Mother says, defending herself.

Chapter Two Bradley International Airport is a Connecticut success story. It began as a small airport to service Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts, in their urban heyday, but when the corporations of those cities stumbled on treacherous times, airlines drastically cut their flights and some considered pulling out altogether. Nobody, they thought, from central and northern Connecticut and southern Massachusetts would be flying anywhere anymore. Wrong. The truth was, most of us Connecticut and Massachusetts "nobodies" had always used Providence, Logan, La Guardia and JFK because Bradley had such crummy flight offerings.

Two airlines at Bradley experimented by expanding their flights, and lo and behold, the passengers came. In droves. And so did more flights and then whole new airlines and the urgent need for terminal and parking expansion. Today Bradley International is a very cool airport, big enough to get you everywhere, but small enough so that you almost always run into someone you know.

When I'm at Bradley I cannot help but remember how my father used to bring me here as a child. How in those days we could park at the end of the runway and stand right up against the fence, watching the planes taxi faster and faster toward us, bearing down on us, and then hearing and feeling the thunderous roar of the engines as they powered the jets over our heads into the sky.

The American Airlines flight has arrived on time, but Paul Fitzwilliam is so late emerging from the gate area I have begun to think he missed it. But no, there he is -- I can see him approaching the barricade. He has a backpack slung over one shoulder and is carrying some lady's pet carrier in his arms, as aforementioned lady is walking sideways to talk to whatever it is inside. I smile and wave. He sees me and moves his head around the carrier to see better and to offer me a quick smile.

He is a cutie.

And he is young. Twenty-five years old to my relatively recent age of thirty-three. When Paul emerges from the barricade, a man hurries over to take the carrier from him, the woman thanks him profusely for carrying Smoochie - - the Yorkie who has now emerged from the cage to be held in her arms -- and then, finally, Paul turns to me with a tremendous smile. He is very tanned, so his teeth look very white. His brown hair is light from the California sun and saltwater; his eyes are dark brown.

It is only in this moment that I realize that he resembles my high-school boyfriend.

"Hi," he says, taking me in his arms and hugging me, then lifting me off the ground and holding me there a moment. He is five-ten, only three inches taller than me, but Paul is very strong. He puts me down, still holding me, but pulls back slightly to look at my face. "Hello, gorgeous girl," he says, kissing me squarely on the mouth. He lingers there and then releases me to take my hand.

"I brought you this to wear," I say as we head for the baggage area, holding up a blue down-parka with my free hand.

"January is very different in Connecticut than California. It's only twenty-five degrees out." He slides his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close. It is not a terribly efficient way to walk, but it feels rather nice.

I met Paul Fitzwilliam last fall in Los Angeles while I was testifying in a celebrated murder trial -- the "Mafia Boss Murder" trial. He was a police officer in West Hollywood. I work as a producer for DBS News in New York, but while I was out there, after I had finished testifying, DBS put me on the air as coanchor of a nightly news special about the trial.

After the trial was finished, I stuck around for a week and Paul and I got to know each other better. Then two weeks later, Paul flew east to look at Quinnipiac University School of Law and some law schools in New York, and we had a chance to hang out some more. Understand that there has been, from day one, such physical attraction between us, it is almost unbearable. And yet, we have not given in to it. Or Paul hasn't and so I have followed suit.

Up until now, Paul has been somewhat of a ladies' man. (He's already confessed to sleeping with four different women in the past year.) And although for years and years I was rather conservative in this department, it seems that in the last few I've become a bit of a -- well, why don't we just call it a "sensualist"? (In other words, I seem to have awakened sexually in a way that has infinitely complicated my life.)

Paul is from an upper-middle-class California family who was horrified when he chose to, as his parents phrased it, "Throw the family back a hundred years to be a cop." But Paul is an active guy and I can understand the lure the streets hold for him. Prior to the police academy, he had been working the oil rigs of Montana and was an aspiring adventure novelist. After he started working for the West Hollywood Police Department, Paul finished his bachelor's degree at night at the University of Southern California and shortly thereafter began considering law school. He wants to become a prosecutor.

That's when we met in a rather startling fashion. And what very quickly happened in California, I think, was that each of us sensed that we could easily hurt the other. Whatever it is that Paul has in his personality, I have been falling very hard for it. And he, for whatever reason, seems even more taken with me. He is young, but because he grew up with an alcoholic father, he saw a lot and he saw it early. And whether a father is absent through booze or death, with Paul and me, it doesn't seem to matter, we both appear to be emotionally banged up in the same way -- or at least in a way that enables us to understand each other.

"I finally heard from Fordham," Paul tells me in the baggage area, his arm still around me, watching the conveyor belt and absently running his hand up and down my arm. "The scholarship came through --

"Really?" I say, eyebrows high.

"But I can't transfer into the NYPD," he finishes. "They're laying off people."

"Oh," I say.

"So Fordham's out, I'm afraid." He looks down at me, giving my shoulder a squeeze. "I know it would be nicer for us if I went to school in Manhattan, but I'm not sure I'm cut out to live there anyway."

That is where I live. Manhattan. I still have one foot in Connecticut, though, with a cottage in my hometown of Castleford, and I'm planning to buy my childhood home from my mother.