Until Death

by Alicia Rasley

  Patiently, I reminded him, “But it’s the same as with Don. He’s removing the person least likely to settle to get to the person most likely to settle.”

  “With Don, I can see that. But he didn’t need Bowie dead if all he wanted was a settlement. He just needed to strike a deal with Wanda and get her to buy off the suit too.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “I guess I don’t see his actions as consistent for a man who wants a quick settlement. He seems more out for . . . well, justice. And he’s not going to get that if both the men he sees as being crooks are eliminated.”

  I shook my head. “He’s a militia-type. He sees elimination as a method of getting justice.”

  “But . . . Never mind. I’ve got to get to a consult.”

  “Mike, wait.” I remembered my vow never to ask a man out again. Okay, so I wouldn’t ask him out. I’d just suggest a . . . a meeting. “Maybe we can meet. For dinner.”

  He paused, and I had that second of thinking he was trying to come up with a polite way to say he’d never go out with the sort of wimpy needy woman who had to ask. But he just said, “I guess if you drop this insurance thing, you’ll have more time for that, won’t you? That’s good, because you only have five more days.”

  “I’m only talking about dinner,” I replied frostily, relieved beyond safety.

  “That’s where we’ll start. I’ll come by when I get done. You think of a place. See ya.”

  That wasn’t so hard. I just had to make it sound like I didn’t care all that much if he said no. The new version of playing hard to get, I guess: easy to get, maybe, but hard to keep.

  And that would work as long as I never let him . . . or myself . . . know how much I needed to see him, to touch him, to feel his arms tighten around me in that dangerously comforting way. And I had to take some time to figure out how to manage that.

  But I didn’t even get a moment. The phone rang again almost immediately. This time I didn’t recognize the voice—a hard-bitten but paradoxically polite voice. “Mrs. Ross, this is Coach Stanton up at the track camp. You’ll have to come get your son.”

  My heart stilled. “Is he hurt?”

  “No. He’s okay. But please come pick him up. I’ll explain when you get here.”

  Was he homesick? Miserable? Ill? I grabbed my purse and headed out the door, driving through the golden afternoon light south to Purdue.

  COACH STANTON was beefy, built more like a wrestling coach than a track man. He took me immediately into a bare little office. Tommy, slouched in a chair, looked up defiantly as I entered. I saw a bright red bruise on his cheek and, biting back a gasp, went to kneel beside him.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “It impacted another camper’s fist,” Coach Stanton answered for him.

  Tommy squirmed away from my probing fingers. “I’m all right, Mom. It’s just a bruise.”

  He pushed his wheeled chair back so I was left there foolishly kneeling in the middle of the floor. I rose to my feet, regarding him with some bafflement. “You got into a fight, Tommy?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So this is track camp, not football camp,” the coach said. It sounded like he’d made this point before. “You don’t get to beat up on teammates here.”

  I waited for Tommy to protest that he was only defending himself, that the other guy hit him first. But he said nothing at all, only turning his head sullenly away.

  The coach looked to be slightly more forthcoming, so I turned to him. “This isn’t like Tommy. He doesn’t pick fights. I want to know how this all started.”

  “So do I. But neither boy is talking. All I have to go on is what four counselors independently said they saw—your son jumping on a boy and punching him, and the other boy then retaliating. Maybe you can get more out of him, but I don’t care. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards violence here. So both boys are headed home. And from what I can tell, that’s not quite fair to the other boy, is it, Tommy?”

  He shrugged, still without looking at either of us. “I didn’t say he should go home. You’re the one who decided that.”

  “Well, next time you decide to hit a teammate, you might think of that first, that you might be ruining his camp week too. Go get your gear, and then you’re free to leave.”

  Tommy had nothing to say—nothing—as we drove back to the interstate and headed north. I went from compassion to exasperation to real anger, but nothing got him to utter a word. I kept glancing at him in the passenger seat, worried that he was catatonic. But all I saw was a sulky, stubborn teenager with the beginnings of a shiner and what in a younger child would be called a pout.

  Finally, I pulled over into a rest area and ordered him out of the car. He complied without speaking, only, I realized, because he wanted to shove some coins into the vending machine under the rain shelter. I wanted to smack him for his insolence until I saw him press the cold can of soda against his bruised face. It must hurt him, that bruise. He looked young and vulnerable suddenly, and I forced down my anger and took his arm. “Come on, let’s walk.”

  We walked along the path past the restroom building, into the parking lot where the big semis idled like drowsy dinosaurs above us. The engines were so loud there we couldn’t talk even if we wanted to, and I let the growling silence soothe down my roughened nerves. By the time we made it to the fence that marked the boundary to the neighboring farm, I understood.

  “It’s about your dad, isn’t it? That boy said something about this lawsuit.”

  Tommy didn’t deny it, so I added hesitantly, “I understand then. And so would your father. I don’t think he’d want you to hit anyone, but he’d be proud that you stood up for him.”

  “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  That stopped me. I thought I’d figured it out, but—”Then why?”

  Tommy turned his back on me, but it wasn’t a gesture of dismissal. He jammed his hands in his baggy shorts pockets and leaned against a fence post, looking out over the field. I could barely hear him over the roar of the traffic. “Okay, I had to. It wasn’t like I wanted to defend him. But I had to, for . . . for my own honor. Not for his. He didn’t have any.”

  I couldn’t respond to this. I couldn’t tell him he was wrong, or even that he was right. Instead, I asked, “So the other boy did say something? What?”

  “You know. That everyone was saying Dad had cheated that farmer. And then he let his buddy take the rap for it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know. That he bugged out. Took the easy route. Quit. Offed himself.”

  Just what I’d feared. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

  “It wasn’t the first time.”

  So much for my attempts to hide the rumors. “What do you mean?”

  “At the funeral. I heard one of those real estate guys talking to another suit. They were laughing. Said Dad’s business must be bad because he took the Black Tuesday way out.”

  “Black Tuesday?” I repeated stupidly.

  “Yeah, Mom, you know. I ran a search later. For Black Tuesday. It was the stock market crash. And all those businessmen who lost all their money jumped out their office windows.”

  “So there wasn’t any report for Mr. Parcells.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “No. But I have all that research, so maybe I’ll do one on that anyway.” Then he added bitterly, “But then everyone would say I was really writing about my dad. Subconsciously or something.”

  “Honey—”

  “I know you’re going to say it’s not true. And I know the coroner said it was an accident. But they do that. To spare the family. And I figured it out. Dad didn’t leave me any money. And Steve told me you were giving him and Jenny money for college, so I guess he did
n’t leave anything to them either. And all of a sudden . . . no child support. So he was broke. Ruined.”

  The ugly truth seemed the lesser of two evils here. “He left everything to Wanda. Or that’s the way it turned out. There was a life insurance policy to fund an annuity for you.”

  At this, he looked back. “Really? But you said it was. So it didn’t happen, huh? What, did he stop paying the premiums? He was that hard up? I knew it.”

  “No, he left plenty of money. And he paid all the premiums. But the insurance company heard the rumors too. And, well, they decided to take advantage of that and deny the claim. They said they don’t have to pay off if a policy is taken out within a year of . . . a suicide.”

  Tommy gave a short laugh. “Dad really screwed that up, didn’t he? What did he have to wait? Another couple months?” Then the sardonic smile slipped off his face. “He just quit on us,” he whispered. “I don’t even have my driver’s license yet, and he quit. I knew . . . I mean, I knew that being my dad wasn’t number-one priority for him. But at least I was there on his list. And then . . . then it turns out that money and his business, they mattered more than anything else? That he was a coward? He’d rather kill himself than fix his mistakes.”

  I remembered my own sense of betrayal when I’d imagined Don could just kill himself, desert his son and leave him fatherless, just choose to end his pain by causing untold pain to Tommy. Don was capable of many things, but not that. And I had to let Tommy know it, no matter what the cost.

  “Honey, your dad screwed up in a lot of ways. And I don’t condone any of it. But he wouldn’t have stuck you with that trauma.” I took a deep breath and put my hand on his implacable back. “I didn’t want to tell you this, and I know it sounds crazy, but that man Murdoch, the one who was suing your dad. I think he murdered your father. Pushed him over the wall at the building site.”

  This got Tommy turned all the way around. He regarded me with open astonishment and then skepticism. “Oh, come on, Mom. You think he went to the trouble of doing a lawsuit, and then just shoved Dad out the building?”

  “I think Murdoch wanted your dad to settle. And he wouldn’t. So Murdoch got angry and shoved your dad out that window.” When I saw his face twist in that contemptuous adolescent way, my anguish fled, to be replaced by annoyance. “You know, it really is aggravating how you’re so willing to assume that I’m nuts. For your information, Murdoch was just arrested for illegal possession of bomb-making materials.” Okay, so it was also fertilizer-making material. But if it worried the ATF, that was good enough for me. “And the police are investigating him for possibly trying to kill Will Bowie too—and guess what? Will’s also a party to the lawsuit and doesn’t want to settle.”

  “Really?” Tommy’s hard young face relaxed now. “That’s sort of cool. I mean, not cool. You know. Interesting. What did he do? Murdoch? To try to kill Will.”

  Too late I remembered the Diablo. “Well, this is going to upset you. But—” I added as I saw the panic in his eyes “—not as much as that rumor. It’s Will’s car. Someone—most likely Murdoch—drove Will off the road into the river. He survived, but the car . . . it was crushed by the dam.”

  “They couldn’t salvage it?”

  “No. But I DVR’d the news report that showed the tow truck dragging it out of the river.”

  I thought somehow I’d escaped—gotten through this awful moment with a minimum of damage due to Tommy’s legendarily short attention span. But as he started back to the car, he said, “And they’re going to try him for Dad’s murder?”

  I had to keep this calm, neutral, as much as I could. I didn’t want Tommy getting some crazy idea of—well, I’d make sure he didn’t. “They’ve got him on the chemicals charge now. But I told them what I know, and they’re investigating. So I’m letting them take over. Do their job.”

  “You mean, all this time since Dad died, you’ve been trying to get this guy?”

  I thought it best not to tell him about that little digression that dead-ended with his stepmother. “More or less.” I unlocked the car and climbed in, and Tommy followed suit.

  “It does sound sort of crazy. But not as crazy as Dad killing himself. I didn’t want to believe that, but that’s what people are saying, isn’t it?”

  “A few people are saying that.” It hit me suddenly—how long he must have contemplated this in secret. “Why didn’t you tell me about what you’d heard?”

  That sullen look settled back on his face. “That’s what Lily said too. She said I should just ask you. But I didn’t want to upset you. And besides, I didn’t think you’d tell me the truth. I figured out Dad didn’t leave me any money, and you didn’t tell me the truth about that.”

  “The truth is complicated.”

  “Well, I just had Algebra II, and I think I can handle complicated, you know?”

  “Okay.” I waited till I entered the highway and got up to speed. “Your dad took out a life insurance policy when we got divorced. It was supposed to fund an annuity that would pay for child support and college and a trust fund for you. There would have been plenty. And there still will be, if I can prove this was murder, not suicide.”

  “I don’t care about the money. I mean, yeah, I do. But—” Tommy leaned exhaustedly against the window. “I just want everything to stop for a while. I want to go back to school and take tests and run cross-country, you know? And be a kid for a couple more years.”

  In a few minutes, he was asleep, still kid enough that the motion of the car made him drowsy. And in a couple of months he’d have a driver’s license. I shoved that worry behind all the others and glanced down at his face, sweet and slack and bruised.

  At home I got him settled with the week’s worth of Simpsons re-runs I’d taped, and was about to call a couple of his friends to come over and cheer him up when the doorbell rang.

  It was Mike. Instinctively, I came out onto the porch and closed the door behind me so Tommy wouldn’t see or hear us. “Mike . . . uh . . .”

  “Dinner, remember?”

  “I can’t. Tommy came home. He was in a fight, and it was about his dad, and I should probably be with him tonight.”

  Mike stood there, still calm. Still reasonable. “Tomorrow then.”

  Too much. Too soon. Too much feeling, too much anxiety. I felt like Tommy—I just wanted everything to stop moving for a while. “He doesn’t really need any more disruption right now. So, well, maybe not tomorrow either. I mean, after all this is over, maybe we can get together, but not now. Not now that he’s back.”

  I expected an argument. A protest. Something. But Mike just said, “Sure,” in a hard voice, and turned on his heel and left.

  I wanted to call him back. I wanted to run after him. But instead I went back into the house and found myself in the kitchen, and when I got my breath under control, started dinner. He’d call me. Wouldn’t he? If he wanted me as bad as he said?

  The next morning, Brad was waiting at my office door when I arrived. He had a bag of bagels, a couple of coffees, and a smile on his face. He looked happy. “What’s going on, Brad?” I asked as I let us in.

  He handed me a cup of coffee and set the bagels down on the reception desk. “Wanda . . . well, Wanda asked me to talk to you.”

  “Why can’t she talk to me herself? I’m no longer feeling vengeful.”

  “I know. She just finds it awkward. I think.” He smiled a little indulgently, even besottedly. Groan. I sure hoped I didn’t look that goofy whenever I thought of Mike Warren. “I think perhaps she feels a bit regretful now that she isn’t seeing you as the enemy. And she knows we’re old friends. And well, it’s my job anyway.”

  “Your job?”

  “Yes. She’s asked me to take over as president of Primeline.”

  I could have predicted it. In fact, I did predict it. “That’s great. She’s
lucky to have you.”

  He put out his hands in an apologetic gesture. “This is a real challenge, and perhaps I need one. All those years, Don took all the challenges. And he dragged you and me along with him.”

  “Our heels dug in and dragging behind us. What a team.”

  “Most of the time, it worked. That combination of challenge and caution. I guess now, after having several leadership positions in the public sector, I feel like I can do both. Caution—the old me. And challenge—the new me.”

  I peered at him. The New Brad looked pretty much like the Old Brad, only with a sort of feverish light in his blue eyes. I guess a man didn’t have to be married to careen headfirst into a midlife crisis and find Wanda waiting there at the crash site. “Well, I’m glad she’s got someone with experience. I was afraid she’d install someone—” someone like that bartender, I almost said, and finished lamely, “—someone without a real estate background.”

  “There are some excellent development contracts, like the Netmore one on Bowie’s land.”

  “That would be excellent,” I said, “except for that injunction against starting construction.”

  “That’s what I need to talk to you about. We’ve been through the books, and we’ve figured out that Primeline can manage a one point five million dollar settlement offer. It stands to lose at least that much if Netmore builds elsewhere while this lawsuit drags on.”

  “And what about Will? Won’t he have to pay up too?”

  “I don’t think so. What money Murdoch’s got left for attorneys, he’ll need for his criminal trial. And, well, there’s speculation that . . .” he paused to choose his words carefully “. . . that he might have had something to do with the accident that sent Bowie to the hospital.”

  I thought it best to act surprised. “Where did you hear that?” Did Wanda break her vow of silence on this issue? Did she suggest Murdoch killed Don too?

  Apparently not. “I got the idea from what the police said in the newspaper article. Then I called a couple colleagues downtown.”