“I’m fine Dylan,” I told him. Exasperation was beginning to creep into my voice, but then I remembered something that might actually calm him down. “Do you remember that old revolver that Dad used to keep under his mattress? Well I’ve got it.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Dad gave it to me when I graduated.” I kept the unloaded revolver in my suitcase. I hadn’t unpacked it and had no intention to do so any time soon. Even if I did unpack it, I hadn’t cleaned it in ages and had no ammunition for the thing.
I’d patched up enough gunshot victims in Atlanta hospitals to develop a healthy fear and dislike of firearms. Dad had taught Dylan and me basic firearm safety and shooting when we were teenagers, but I hadn’t touched a gun in years and had no immediate plans to brush up on my skills. But that was another thing that Dylan didn’t need to know.
“Well that’s something at least,” he grumbled into his milkshake.
“Charlie is around anyway,” I told Dylan after a moment’s silence. “He’ll keep me safe. Stop worrying.”
That wasn’t the right thing to say at all, but by the time I realized it, Dylan was already frowning deeply.
“I’m starting to come to terms with you two being, like, a thing,” he said, “but I’m still a long way from not worrying about that situation, either. The idea that worry one will be eliminated by worry two is wishful thinking.”
“Have you given any thought to taking anti-anxiety medication? It seems like you’re worrying a lot lately,” I said half sarcastically. In truth, it might be a good idea for Dylan. He was a chronic worrier.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m just saying—”
“That I need to be medicated? No thanks. Actually, I think it’s perfectly rational to worry about the things I’ve been worried about. You’re my sister. I don’t like the idea of you in dangerous jobs or dangerous relationships. No amount of medication would fix that anyway.”
“Dating Charlie is hardly dangerous.”
“I meant that emotionally and not physically.”
“Dating Charlie isn’t emotionally dangerous either.”
“Let’s see if you still feel that way in six months.”
“Ok, well it was fun visiting with you, but I’d better get back to the mansion,” I said, losing patience with his constant nagging. I needed to leave before I exploded. I stood up from the little table we were at. “Thanks for helping me with the car. I mean it.”
“You’re rushing off to avoid this discussion?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing, yes. I don’t think we can discuss it without getting mad at each other.”
He shook his head at me. “At least you’re honest. Clean that gun and keep it handy, ok?”
I made a non-committal noise in response.
“Promise?” he pressed.
“I promise I’ll think about it.”
Dylan sighed. “That’s the best I’m going to get isn’t it?”
I nodded, hugged him, and picked up my purse. “Thanks again for helping me with the car buying! Love you.”
“Love you too. Even if you’re going to be the reason I need to be on anxiety medication.”
“What else are sisters for?”
27
Charlie
“I don’t know what any of this says,” I told Eva, looking at the records she was so excited about. “I took German in school and it didn’t stick.” I gazed helplessly at all the accents, unfamiliar letters, and hyphenated words. I couldn’t even take a wild guess at how to pronounce most of what as in front of me.
“It proves that Richard didn’t have anything to do with Edith’s death!” Eva was grinning triumphantly. Her blue eyes were bright and excited, and her cheeks were flushed pink. She kissed me enthusiastically and while I had no idea why, I was happy to reciprocate her enthusiasm. I tried to grab at the drawstring on today’s pair of light blue scrubs and angle her back toward the wall to pin her up against it, but she wriggled away and pointed at the records. “Don’t distract me. This is too important!”
I looked back down at the faded medical charts still in my left fist. They were entirely in French. They were also, according to the date (which I actually could read), more than forty years old. I had no idea how these could possibly clear Richard.
“Can we back up?”
Eva flashed me another excited smile. “Sorry. I know I’m rushing. These are from the missing period in the original group of records. Remember how there was a gap in the mid 70’s?”
Only very vaguely. I said yes anyway. Eva smirked like she knew I’d forgotten. She was getting disturbingly good at reading me.
“Well like I said I would, I talked with Dr. Matthieu. He found these in his records and sent them over. They’re from that missing time. It turns out that Edith was sent to a group of specialists in Switzerland. The Swiss medical team recommended that Edith undergo a lobotomy.”
“Jesus Christ. She was lobotomized?” I may not be a nurse, or a doctor, or anything like that, but I knew lobotomies were in the same general pseudoscience category as bloodletting to balance the bodily humours and using leeches to ward off the plague.
“No. Thankfully the procedure was never performed. The night before she was supposed to be going to surgery, Richard showed up out of the blue and checked her out of the facility and took her home. According to the chart that the head nurse updated that evening, Richard yelled at the doctor and told him he was glorified butcher, a quack, and a sociopath. Richard vowed that no one at their ‘hospital of horrors’ was ever going to touch Edith. He also punched an orderly in the face and shoved a nurse.”
“Sounds like Richard. For once, it also all sounds warranted and totally appropriate to me.”
Eva nodded. “It certainly seems that way to us now. But back then, people didn’t really argue with their doctors, especially about subjects as taboo as mental illness. Mostly people just wanted those problems to not exist, and they were so completely embarrassed that very few people were well informed about treatment options. Also, lobotomies weren’t understood as being nearly so awful as we know they are today. They were falling out of favor, in fact, they were being banned around the world, but even as that was happening, many were still being performed by more old-fashioned doctors. Especially on women. Lobotomies and other cruel treatments were disproportionately performed on women and minorities. It was incredibly fucked.”
“Poor Edith,” I said. “She’s very lucky she escaped being lobotomized.”
“Not lucky. Loved. She had someone who loved her,” Eva replied. “Richard cared so much about his sister that he disobeyed his father who’d given consent for the surgery, flew to Switzerland, and physically removed his sister from the care of the people he thought were trying to harm her. He loved her. I just don’t believe that someone that cared so much for Edith would violently kill her.”
“I don’t know if I agree with you,” I told her. She frowned but looked more curious than hurt that I didn’t share her excitement.
“Which part?”
“That this proves that Richard couldn’t have killed Edith. Sometimes people commit the most violent acts against the people they love.”
Eva’s eyes widened, but then she nodded. “I guess you have a point. I’ve patched up enough domestic violence cases in the ER that I ought to know that.”
“But I think this is important for another reason. I think it explains something else that I haven’t been able to figure out.”
“What’s that?”
“Why Richard has been so cagey on all things having to do with Edith.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Maybe the reason that Richard has been trying to keep Edith’s murder a secret is the exact same reason he punched an orderly in 1974.” I was beginning to get excited; it was starting to make sense to me at last.
“I still don’t get it.”
“Maybe Richard has decided that he needs to take matters into his own
hands. He knows that Edith was murdered, and instead of letting the justice system find out who did it and why, he’s going to figure it out. And then he’s going to mete out his own version of justice.”
Eva was silent for a long time after my pronouncement.
“You think he’s out for revenge.”
“I think it would be wholly within his character if he was.”
“What about Stephen? How does he fit into this? Do you think Richard killed him?”
I considered her question seriously. Richard’s voice when he called my mother’s house that day to demand that I come manage the crisis had sounded generally surprised. And one of the reasons I never thought Richard was behind Edith’s murder in the first place was that he was simply too clever and too rich to screw up a simple hit. Buying someone under a pile of leaves was an extremely amateur mistake. It was practically guaranteed that the body would be found.
“No,” I finally answered. “I’m not saying that he doesn’t have it in him, I just don’t think he did it.”
“Me either,” she replied. “It just doesn’t seem like Richard to let the body be found like that and make such a big public mess. I also stand by my assertion that he loved Edith and wouldn’t harm her.”
“You’re awfully sweet to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“It’s not sweetness. I profoundly dislike Richard.”
Eva and the rest of the household staff had been enduring the pressure of the murder investigation now for two entire weeks. Murray and Flint did their regular, incompetent thing, but Richard had also been conducting his own version of an investigation. He may have delegated the task to me, but that didn’t stop him from interfering and sometimes undermining my efforts.
“You just don’t like that he snooped in your room,” I said jokingly.
“You’re damn right I don’t like that he snooped in my room,” Eva replied scathingly. “He has absolutely no right to be in my space. I almost quit right then and there.”
Eva had come back to her room one evening after her shift to find Richard poking around in her bathroom. She’d screamed loud enough to summon Paul, the driver, and Rita, the housekeeper to her room. The entire staff had demanded an explanation for what he was doing. His initial story, that he was checking the pipes, had been so obviously utter bullshit that it prompted Eva to threaten to call the cops. In response, he came clean that Eva was in the same room that Stephen had stayed in and he was looking for evidence like the world’s most incompetent private eye.
Needless to say, this was how Richard learned that I was dating Eva. Managing that crisis had not been fun. On the upside, it had resulted in a significant pay raise for Eva and the addition of three new locks on her door.
“I’m honestly still very surprised you didn’t quit over that,” I told her honestly. “I probably would have been out the door that night if it had been me.”
“I’m not a quitter.”
I remembered what Dylan had said about Eva’s reluctance to quit on things and his whole “Sophie’s choice” analogy. I thought about telling her that it was alright to quit in certain circumstances, but we’d been over the pros and cons of Eva leaving her position at the Durant mansion so many times I was afraid she might decide she’d rather quit dating me if I brought it up again. Instead of picking a fight, I pulled her toward me and hugged her.
“You’re definitely not a quitter,” I told her. “You’re very stubborn. I’d never mess with you.”
She smiled up at me and ran her fingers through my hair to make me shiver. “You can mess with me all you like,” she said in a sexy, bedroom voice. All thoughts of danger and murder disappeared in an instant. “You can mess with me all night long.”
I did.
28
Eva
“Fuck you,” Alexander snapped at Thomas, throwing the glass of orange juice at him and simultaneously pushing his breakfast plate to the ground where it shattered. “Get out you fucking faggot. You’re fired!” He turned his vitriol to me. “You’re fired too, you stupid bitch. You’re both totally incompetent.”
Alexander had been having bad day after bad day. Since the murder investigation into Stephen had begun, the level of ambient stress in the mansion had been steadily ticking up day by day. Alexander might not understand it, but he could feel it just as clearly as any of us could. The inevitable progress of his disease meant that we couldn’t ever explain anything enough that he remembered, and his confusion exacerbated his symptoms.
“Get out!” He wailed at us both. He rose shakily from his chair and advanced toward us with his fork. He obviously posed no actual danger to us, but being menaced with a fork was not my idea of a good morning.
“I hear you’re frustrated,” I told him soothingly, trying to diffuse the situation as I’d been taught. “Your wife told us exactly how you like your breakfast, but we must have gotten your order confused with another guest. We’re terribly sorry you didn’t like it and will make you a new order right now.”
Alexander no longer really knew this was his house. Instead, he now usually thought we were in some kind of a hotel, which honestly worked just as well, if not better, than the conceits we’d been using to manage his confusion.
“I don’t like scrambled eggs,” he yelled petulantly. “I don’t like orange juice. I want a Belgian waffle and coffee. Now.”
He was not allowed to have caffeine because it made him antsy and his diabetes prevented him from eating waffles, but I nodded obediently. I pretended to write his order down and asked a few inconsequential questions to keep Alexander distracted as Thomas hustled to pick up the glass and spilled food. Alexander typically liked scrambled eggs and orange juice just fine; whatever had gotten into him this morning had apparently altered decades of consistent food preferences. I hoped this wouldn’t become a pattern.
“Right away Mr. Durant,” I told him seriously. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll go fetch that coffee now.”
He sat down and Thomas and I both relaxed slightly. It was only eight a.m. If the entire shift was like this, we’d be in for another very long day. Our relief for the evening would not arrive until dinner.
“Should we call Dr. Matthieu?” Thomas asked me quietly after calling Rita to re-prepare the scrambled eggs and orange juice for Alexander’s breakfast. “He’s really struggling today.”
“Yes, please call him,” I whispered back. “See if we should adjust his medication or something. He almost fell over when he got out of his chair. I don’t want him to hurt himself.”
“What are you two assholes whispering about over there?” Alexander snapped from his chair. “Are you talking about me? Don’t talk about me! I’m sitting right here god damnit.”
“No sir,” I told him, feigning innocence. “We weren’t talking about you. Actually, we were discussing the game last night. Did you watch?”
“Yes, of course I did. It was a complete shit-show as usual. I don’t even know why I continue to watch these so-called games. The game isn’t what it used to be at all…” He rambled on and on. His rant was semi-incoherent, but it was definitely better than throwing food.
I had no idea why this certain distraction tactic worked, but I was glad that Thomas had figured it out. Obviously, Alexander had no idea what game, or even what sport I was supposedly referring to. I think he just liked to complain. At any rate, he had particularly strong opinions this morning.
Our conversation about ‘the game’ kept Alexander occupied for almost an hour. Long enough to eat his breakfast and get dressed. I almost let myself believe that the tide was turning, and had just poured him a rare cup of decaf coffee as a reward for coming around, when a knock on the sunroom door startled me.
“I apologize for not making an appointment Ms. Eva,” Richard said respectfully. He’d been particularly careful around me since the snooping incident.
I inclined my head coldly in greeting. Appointments weren’t technically required, but I certainly wouldn’t obje
ct if he started making them. Richard may not be a murderer, but he was definitely a creep.
“You ought to be apologizing t0 me,” Alexander snapped. “She’s just an assistant. I’ve got a full schedule today Richard. You can’t just drop in whenever you feel like pretending you aren’t the world’s worst and most neglectful son.”
Richard took in his father’s vitriol with a single raised eyebrow in my direction. All I could do was shrug and whisper, “today’s a bad day.”
“I came by for a specific purpose today,” Richard said to his father, sinking down in the rocker next to him. “Do you think you have a few minutes to spare out of your agenda to discuss Edith?”
I pretended to organize the medication bottles in the corner of the room while I listened closely to the conversation. This was the first time I’d heard Richard discussing Edith with Alexander. Usually they talked about, well, pretty much nothing. Richard’s infrequent visits were generally limited to pleasantries and platitudes.
“What’s she gotten herself into this time?” He sounded dismissive and more than a bit embarrassed at the mention of her name.
Alexander was unaware of his younger daughter’s passing. Trying to tell him would only make him sad and then he would forget. Like his wife Vivian, his family had become immortal in his fading memory.
“Nothing unusual,” Richard said with a shrug. “I was just wondering if you’ve been discussing any new treatments with her medical team?”
This conversation made no sense. Not only was Edith dead, but Richard had been exclusively in charge of her care for decades. Still, Richard seemed to be paying careful attention to his father’s reactions.
For his part, Alexander seemed to be giving the question genuine thought. For a moment, he sounded lucid. “After the incident abroad, I turned that all over to you,” he said with a frown. “That was years ago. I’m not an idiot. I know that.”
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