Bones of Contention

by Jeanne Matthews

A hurried young server arrived and spieled off the evening’s specials: camel croquettes, buffalo kabobs, and meat pie. They ordered drinks—Dinah a glass of Shiraz and Margaret a martini—and pondered the menu.

  “Cleon’s way with a martini is the first thing that attracted me to him. All the other boys I’d gone out with in high school and college guzzled beer, but Cleon aspired to sophistication even in the backwater he came up in.”

  “He grew up in Needmore, right?”

  “He used to brag it was Tallahassee. But after he won a few big cases, he lost the sense of inferiority and started embroidering on his countrified past, regaling the tony Atlanta crowd with stories about the bumpkins he’d known back in Needmore. It called their attention to how far up the ladder he’d risen, how much higher he still might rise.”

  Dinah said, “I’ve always been curious about Cleon’s early years, what he was like when…when he was just starting out as a young lawyer.”

  “Don’t pussyfoot. You want to know what your mother saw in him.”

  “That, too.”

  “Did she never talk to you about him?”

  “She’s never talked to me about Cleon or my own father, even. Nothing that wasn’t self-evident. She’s pretty frugal with details about the men in her life.”

  Margaret dabbed her lips with her napkin and turned thoughtful. “Cleon was a well-built, athletic boy, sure of his abilities and ambitious as hell. He believed he could conquer the world with one hand tied behind his back. Nothing was going to stop Cleon Dobbs.”

  “The drive hasn’t changed,” said Dinah.

  “But there’s nothing left to drive for.” Margaret was pensive. “All that fire and charisma and he didn’t get the grail. He didn’t get…”

  “Our drinks are here,” said Dinah, cutting her off. The waiter offloaded the martini and the wine and took their food order. Margaret went for the beef rib-eye, rare, with fries and an extra cupful of blue cheese dressing for the salad. Dinah ordered the pasta arrabiata and a side Caesar.

  As their server was walking away, Margaret tasted her martini. “Vodka! I don’t know what’s wrong with bartenders anymore. I wanted a martini, old school with gin, not this odorless, tasteless potato water.”

  “Send it back. I’ll run and catch him.”

  “No, no. This is just the aperitif. I’ll make myself plain on the next round. I don’t care if I get snockered tonight. I’m in pit city. That’s another thing we said in the sixties. Pit city.” Her mouth quirked up on one side. “We had no idea. No idea at all.”

  Dinah couldn’t see Margaret as a murderess. She wasn’t a soft woman, and she made no secret of her lasting anger toward Cleon for dumping her after four short years of marriage—anger, Dinah imagined, in direct proportion to how much she’d once loved him. It was obvious that she’d cared about Dez Fisher, too, and Dinah was probably the only person on the continent who could condole with her. “Get as drunk as you like, Margaret. It’s girls’ night out.”

  “All of Cleon’s women should get drunk together. Me, Neesha, his old secretary Darla, Seth Farraday’s mother. I’m sure there were a lot more. But there was only one woman who gave him heartburn.”

  So much for condolence. “Don’t start in on her, Margaret. Please.”

  She started in. “Cleon wanted Swan Fately the minute he laid eyes on her. He chased after her and courted her like she was a princess. She didn’t scruple to remind him he was already married, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He had the bit between his teeth. He wasn’t going to let a wife and child stand between him and the Holy Grail.”

  “Margaret, I understand why you hate my mother, but don’t belittle her to me. She is my mother and I’ve heard more than I care to hear about her foibles.”

  “From Neesha?”

  “Yes, of course. K.D., too.”

  “Neesha’s lived in Swan’s shadow longer than I’d have predicted. She married Cleon for his money, of course. With Cleon away from home so much, I expect she has a handyman on the side.” She laughed. “All the Viagra in the world is no substitute for youth.”

  With his doughy physique and dour disposition, Wendell didn’t seem like the stud of anyone’s dreams, but there was no arguing with sexual chemistry. And Margaret was obviously in the dark about her boy’s semi-incestuous love life. She imbibed the last of the potato water and raised a hand for the waiter. “Your mother never seems to age. She must have a pact with the Devil.”

  “She doesn’t have a pact with the Devil, Margaret. She’s not an ogre.”

  “I know she’s not.”

  Conversation lapsed for a few minutes until their server arrived with the salads.

  Margaret ordered an “honest” martini. “Mind you, that’s gin, Tanqueray if you have it, and tell the bartender I’ll just imagine the vermouth.”

  “No worries, missus. And you, miss? Will you have another glass of Shiraz?” It rhymed with pizzazz.

  “Of course, she’ll have another,” said Margaret. “Keep ’em coming every twenty minutes ’til we cry uncle.”

  Dinah had to laugh. Margaret was in rare form.

  “It’s true I hated your mother once. But give me some credit for the wisdom of age. Wisdom’s blinking all that comes with age. That and the spotty hands and sagging boobs. No, Swan couldn’t help the effect she had on Cleon and I admire the way she held onto herself. She didn’t let him take possession. She’s the only person, male or female, who’s ever brought him to his knees. He never owned her the way he’s owned everyone else, myself included. You can’t imagine how I cheered the day she ditched him and ran off with your father. It nearly killed Cleon. He drank himself sick on my back porch and cried like a baby.” She sat ruler straight and her eyes sparkled with schadenfreude.

  Their main course came, along with the honest martini and the Shiraz. Margaret swigged the Tanqueray. “Ahh, now this is more like it.” She reminded the waiter to hit her again in twenty-minutes and salted her steak. “It’s a relief to eat a simple meal for a change and not have to rave about the back taste of fenugreek or a soupçon of amchoor in the sauce. I never really liked all those outlandish dishes Dez set such store by, but I acted like shark’s fin soup was the nectar of the gods. My Southern upbringing. You know how it is. But gin and red meat, those are the essential food groups.”

  She sucked down half her martini. “Yes, Cleon stayed drunk at my place for two weeks after Swan shagged off to Miami with Hart Pelerin. Lost a big products liability case because he couldn’t keep his mind on his facts. I tried to help, but the man was a basket case for six months. It nearly wrecked his career.”

  Everybody knew Cleon had a breakdown after Swan left him. But he’d gotten over it. He won joint custody of Lucien, made peace with Swan and, over time, won the friendship of Dinah’s father.

  Dinah said, “Cleon likes to tease you and Neesha about his deathless love for Mom and how marvelous she is, but he got over her years ago. He befriended my father. They played cards, went to football games, barbecues. Apparently, they went quail hunting together at least once with Dez Fisher.”

  “And when your daddy got himself killed, Cleon was Johnny-on-the-spot to represent your mother in court.”

  “As a friend. To keep the feds from railroading her.”

  “It wasn’t just that. He thought he could win her back. He found out the hard way, what goes around, comes around.”

  Unrequited love, it seemed, was the bane of almost everyone’s life. Dinah wondered if her mother had ever loved a man who didn’t love her. Would she understand what it was like to watch a man she loved cry his heart out over another woman, or catch him in bed with a redhead?

  “Don’t spoil our dinner by dredging up old calamities, Margaret. Desmond Fisher’s murder is calamity enough to have to contend with.”

  “Yes. I’ll miss Dez.”

  “He must’ve cared a lot for you to leave his businesses to Wendell and so much money to you.”
>
  “I suppose. We never dreamed how valuable it was or that Wendell would own it someday, lock, stock, and barrel. Of course, Wen will have to sell it. He’s not bold enough or savvy enough to run a company. He’s a good man, a good husband and great with the children. He’s been especially good with Thad. But Wen’s not gutsy. Nothing at all like his daddy.”

  Dinah felt sorry for Margaret. She was due for a serious reality check and daughter-in-law trouble wasn’t the half of it.

  “What do you know about this fish processing plant, Margaret? Did you ever meet any of Desmond’s employees?”

  “No.”

  “Did Wendell or Dez talk about the business at all?”

  “Wen had nothing to do with it and Dez became withdrawn whenever I asked him questions. Our relationship stayed in the shallows.” Her voice thickened. “At least he cared enough to leave me some money.”

  “Plus the epergne,” said Dinah, not sure what to say or how Margaret would take a pitying squeeze of the hand.

  “And the epergne!” She laughed. “It would be the perfect receptacle for his ashes.”

  “Were you in love with him, Margaret? Really in love?”

  “I’d have married him if he asked. He found me witty and desirable, which was balm to my clobbered ego. But love?” She blew a mordant little puff through her nose. “Cleon broke me of love the way Swan Fately broke him.”

  Dinah felt a touch of irritation. Loving someone who doesn’t love you is a heartbreak and two, three months, even a year of breast-beating in the worst cases was understandable. But Margaret and Cleon had had three decades to get over their disappointments. She said, “Mom’s past sixty now, Margaret. If she caused you pain, I’m sure she’s very sorry. I don’t need to hear anymore about her disastrous impact on everyone’s life.”

  “I don’t believe she set about deliberately to cause anyone pain. But she knows that she did and she’s no more remorseful about it than the moon is for shining.”

  There was no point arguing. Like everyone else, Margaret had her own impression of Swan. It sometimes seemed that Swan was nothing but a collage of other people’s impressions. Dinah loved her mother, but she had given up trying to understand her. She had been a benign and lenient parent, charming, but not much engaged in her children’s moral or social development. Especially after Dinah’s father died, she was off in her own world. Like a Dreamtime being, thought Dinah. The Swan Dreaming. She had given her children life, imbued them with nice table manners and a penchant for denial, and retreated into the mythical realm. Without being present, she was everyone’s excuse for something. It was an open question how many of those excuses were hidden lies.

  “My mother has feelings, Margaret. But probably no one knows her well enough to say exactly what they are.”

  “Don’t you want to know her secrets before she’s dead and gone?”

  “Everybody knows the facts of her life. It’s her interpretation of the facts that she’s kept secret. I’m not sure she knows, herself, what to make of all that’s happened. I was hoping Cleon could give me some idea what my father was thinking when he…” She hadn’t meant to bring her father into the conversation, but it wasn’t as if Margaret didn’t already know the gory details. “Cleon is more analytical than Mom. He might have seen or heard something that would help me understand my father’s actions, or the demons that drove him to do what he did.”

  Margaret kept her eyes on her steak, cutting it into prissy little bites and chewing each bite very slowly. She seemed to be chewing her way toward some delicate decision. Finally, she said, “When you talk to Cleon, ask him about your trust fund.”

  “What’s to know? My father stashed a measly few thou of his illegal booty offshore for my college education.”

  “Your father died penniless. The government seized his farm, his bank accounts, everything they deemed to be proceeds of his illegal drug trafficking. It was Cleon who set up that trust.”

  Suddenly, Dinah was ten years old again, bewildered by the news that the father she adored was dead, smothered under a half ton of Acapulco gold when his pickup flipped on a midnight-black road outside of Brunswick. She hadn’t known what Acapulco gold was. Mexican coins? Chains and bangles? And before she’d absorbed the finality of his death, U.S. marshals came and arrested her mother for aiding and abetting. While her mother was in jail awaiting trial, she’d lived with her grandmother in a shanty next to the Okefenokee Swamp and become a pariah in the fifth grade.

  The thing she’d held onto was the belief that however bad her father was in the eyes of society and the law, he’d loved her. He’d concerned himself with her future welfare, outwitted the feds, and squirreled away a nest egg solely for her benefit. It wasn’t a lot and she’d never spent a penny on herself. But it had been important that it was there, a lasting proof of his love. And now he’d betrayed her all over again, from the grave.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why didn’t Cleon take credit for his charity?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” said Margaret, washing down the steak with the last of her martini. “But don’t say I told you about the trust.”

  “Why not?”

  She examined the back of her left hand and rubbed the naked ring finger. “Cleon wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He started out a lowly sole practitioner with a big student loan, a mortgage, his sick mama’s nursing home bills to pay and after we divorced, he was into me for alimony and child support while buying mink coats and trips to Paris and Rome for your mama. Not two years after he made partner at that hotsy-totsy Atlanta law firm, he went on safari to Africa, bought a six hundred acre farm, and built himself a great ol’ big house. When Swan ran out on him, he was on the hook for child support for Lucien, too. But that didn’t stop him from buying a penthouse in Atlanta, a fifty-foot yacht, and setting up your trust fund. You think about it.”

  Part III

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Seth answered the phone at the lodge. “Dinah, where are you?”

  “On the path to Enlightenment. Let me speak to Wendell.”

  “It’s after midnight. He’s in bed. Speak to me. We’ve had some other disturbances here.”

  “They’re going around. Wake Wendell up. Tell him it’s important.”

  “Your uncle wants to talk to you. He’s threatening to put out an APB.”

  “Let him.” She wasn’t sure if she hated Cleon for his lifelong charade or herself for being too stupid to see through him. She couldn’t begin to sort through her feelings for her mother just now, but if she knew…if she had known…

  Seth said, “We’ve had some more items go missing. K.D.’s journal, for instance.”

  “Thad.”

  “He says he didn’t take it.”

  “Have you noticed? Saying a thing very seldom makes it true.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “Why would I? Come to think of it, there was a pink spiral notebook in the backseat of Mackenzie’s car.” She surprised herself with the alacrity of the lie. I’ve been assimilated into the dominant culture, she thought. My depravity is complete.

  “What would Mack want with K.D.’s journal?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest. Now please put Wendell on the line.”

  “Look, Dinah, you’d better…”

  “Don’t you you’d better me, you. Not unless Fisher’s three hundred grand is present and accounted for in Jacko’s evidence room.”

  “There is no money. Thad’s story didn’t pan out.”

  “I don’t believe you. Get Wendell.”

  He let out an exasperated breath. “Cleon’s original will is also missing.”

  “So what? He’s making a new one.”

  “And a handgun. My handgun.”

  “There are no guns in the Territory, remember? Let me speak with Wendell.”

  There was silence, which she assumed would culminate in either Wendell’s voice or Cleon’s. Either way, the
lodge didn’t have caller ID and she wouldn’t be tarrying in Katherine long enough for anyone to find her.

  She pulled Cleon’s soon-to-be-changed will out of the Manila envelope, pressed it open on the bed and skimmed the legalese. Neesha and her children were the primary beneficiaries, but Wendell and his children and Lucien received healthy bequests of stock and property. Margaret and Swan had been remembered with courtly words and $100,000 apiece “in atonement for my sins.” None specified, the old devil.

  There was no mention of the Homers, but he’d left Dinah $25,000 “mad money” and the contents of a safe deposit box in Panama. His attorney would provide her with the location, the number, and the key. What fresh hell would that open?

  She folded the will and tried to stuff it back in the envelope. It caught on something. She reached her hand inside and drew out a smaller envelope. It was a letter addressed to Cleon from Swan Fately.

  Her forehead felt warm and the arrabiata wasn’t sitting well. She was coming down with something. Too bad it wasn’t amnesia.

  “Dinah?” Wendell’s voice jarred. “What’s wrong?”

  The question would seem to fall into the category of duh, but she was beyond sarcasm. “That little item of yours that’s gone missing? I have it.”

  He made a sound like a tire going flat. “Live and let live, Dinah. It can’t mean anything to you.”

  “What it means to me is a quid pro quo. You have something I want. I’ll trade you.”

  “For what? What could I have that you would want?”

  “The Homers.”

  “You’re off base. I don’t have them.”

  “Either you do or Neesha does. Give them to me and I’ll give you the gizmo.”

  “Gizmo?”

  “The item with your sins spelled out in black and white.”

  She felt his hatred through the receiver. She hoped he felt hers.

  “All right. Where are you? I’ll meet you.”

  “Tomorrow morning at the Katherine Airport in front of the Airnorth counter. Nine o’clock. Bring the paintings and I’ll bring the…”