Bitter Business

minute. But I guess I expected Jack to be married to someone closer to his own age. What do his children think of her?”
    “They hate her, naturally.”
    “Why naturally?”
    “Don’t be naive, Kate. Second wives are like dynamite—an inherently explosive commodity. None of the Cavanaugh children can stand her. Philip thinks that she’s a gold digger and is terrified that Jack’s going to die and leave her all his money.”
    “Is he?”
    “No. Peaches comes from a very wealthy family herself. I don’t think Jack feels any pressure to provide for her after he’s gone. Besides, he’s obsessed with the idea of his children running the company together after he dies. I can’t imagine him not leaving them at least the Superior Plating shares.”    _
    “Doesn’t Philip realize that?”
    “He should. It’s obvious to a boob. But not to be too hard on Philip, I don’t think that Jack’s ever been explicit ! about his testamentary plans. Every couple of years ' Philip manages to get up the nerve to ask his father about it and Jack always tells him the same thing: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.’ ”
    “What about Dagny? Does she hate Peaches, too?”
    “Not exactly. She just dismisses her as a frivolous 1 twit—which really is not the case.”
    “And Eugene? What does he think of his stepmother?”
    “First of all, he’d be furious to hear you call Peaches his stepmother. All the Cavanaugh children are very careful to refer to her as their father’s wife. And to answer your question, Eugene in particular doesn’t approve of Peaches. He and his wife are part of a very conservative, almost fundamentalist movement in the Catholic church. Eugene believes that the Bible is explicit in spelling out women’s proper role in the world. Suffice it to say, Peaches doesn’t exactly fit in with that.”
    “He and the dead secretary didn’t get along, I’ll tell you that,” I said, describing the scene between them by the plating tanks. “In the back of my mind I guess I thought there might have been something extracurricular going on between them.”
    “Not likely,” Babbage replied with a shake of his head. “Believe me, Eugene is as straight as they come.”
    “And Lydia?” I asked, steering the conversation back on track. “How does she feel about her father’s wife?”
    “You can imagine that Lydia isn’t thrilled about having a stepmother who’s three years younger than she is and twice as good-looking.”
    “There aren’t many daughters that would be,” I countered. Having not yet met Lydia, I was probably more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt.
    “True. But in this case it’s more complicated than that. Lydia feels very threatened by Peaches, sure, but she’s also fascinated by her.”
    “What do you mean, fascinated?”
    “Fascinated, filled with an unhealthy interest, obsessed.... About a month after Jack and Peaches were married, they started getting crank calls. Someone was calling in the middle of the night and then hanging up the phone. Jack was rattled, but Peaches knew exactly what to do. She’d had trouble of this nature before, you see. Back when she worked for Channel Seven she was stalked by some weirdo who’d seen her on TV and become obsessed with her. You might have heard about it. It caused quite a stir at the time and Peaches was instrumental in getting the state to pass anti-stalking legislation. So when she started getting these hang-up calls, Peaches wasted no time in calling the police. Normally these kinds of cases are a nightmare, but Jack has some pull downtown and Peaches is still considered something of a celebrity, so they were able to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape and get the calls traced. You’ll never guess who was making them.”
    “Who?”
    “Lydia.”
    “I bet Sunday dinners were a little awkward after that.”
    “You could say that.”
    “The whole situation just strikes me as creepy.”
    “I’ll tell you what’s creepy. Lydia’s been gradually changing her appearance.”
    “Changing her appearance? In what way?”
    “Slowly, over the course of the last year, she’s been doing things—growing her hair long like Peaches, having it lightened to the same color. Peaches buys a dress and a week later Lydia shows up at a family function wearing the same one. When you meet Lydia I guarantee you’ll be struck by the resemblance.”
    “I look forward to it,” I said as Davis, Babbage’s