Bones of Contention

by Jeanne Matthews

  She twisted free and regarded him with loathing. “Jacko impounded it.”

  “You’ve got me all wrong, Dinah. I’m on the side of the angels. Fisher was a poacher. All I wanted was to watch him and figure out when and where I could catch him in the act with my camera.”

  With an effort, she dialed back her anger and softened her tone. “Did Cleon know you were an avenging angel for Earth’s Turn?”

  “What do you think?” Seth tasted his tea and put it back in the microwave. “Cleon knew who I was from the get-go. The poaching operation might never have shown up on our radar if he hadn’t put out the word and invited me to come and see for myself. He said if I pretended to be his son, I’d have access to Fisher. I didn’t know he planned to murder him.”

  “Then you must have been fit to be tied when you arrived to find Fisher dead and Cleon about to instigate a full-scale murder investigation. You had to know that Earth’s Turn was already under suspicion for the murder of Bryce Hambrick.”

  “That was something of a facer. But now you know it wasn’t us that killed Hambrick. I spoke with your friend Inspector Newby on the phone this morning. He says that Hambrick’s killers are the same men who abducted you and carried you off to Black Point. He’s already got a confession out of one of them.”

  Dinah believed Seth when he said he hadn’t killed Fisher. It was all Cleon from the start. He had planned to poison Fisher from the time he left Sydney, and he’d built too many redundancies into his frame-up of Wendell for Jacko to do anything about it.

  The microwave beeped. She waited until Seth’s tongue touched the superhot tea and asked, “Where’s the money Thad found, Seth?”

  “Like the Buddha says, the world’s an illusion. Love is an illusion. Happiness is an illusion. That sack of money is an illusion. You haven’t heard Cleon report it stolen, have you?”

  “No, but I believe it exists, one more clincher in the case against Wendell. Cleon probably dusted it with coke or heroin.”

  “If Wendell’s innocent, then you should be glad I’m weakening the case against him by taking the money. And it’ll go to a good cause. Some of it already has. You wouldn’t believe the way Tanya’s crabby old face lit up when I tipped her ten grand for her trouble.”

  Against her will, Dinah liked him for that. She’d told Jacko about the money and it wasn’t her job to get it back. If some of it went astray and made Tanya happy, then she hoped Jacko never found it. And she didn’t really care if Seth profited from Cleon’s crimes. Up to a point. “I want the paintings back, Seth.”

  “Now that’s out of left field.”

  “Not really. You made another slip.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I watched Lucien mat and frame them. The little Maltese crosses you saw are watermarks, a design impressed into the paper when it was manufactured. They were in the margin of the painting, under the mat. You couldn’t have known they were there unless you’d taken off the mats and held the paper up to the light.”

  “You’re really taking me to school, aren’t you? All the same, I think I’ll hang onto them. Cleon will leave you a nice cushion and the money those babies will fetch can do more good for the environmental movement.”

  “They’ll get you busted. They’re fakes.”

  “Lucien?” He started to laugh. “So forgery’s Saint Lucien’s secret vice.”

  “Where are they, Seth?”

  “My room. Behind that ‘Welcome to the Trough’ drawing of the pig Lucien so graciously penned for me. Take them. Consider it my parting gift to the family. I wouldn’t want you to think money is all I’m about.”

  She said, “I’m revising my assumptions about everyone. Doesn’t the Buddha say to forget your old assumptions and begin anew if you want to shed your illusions?”

  “It’s called satori.” He finished his tea. “I’m going upstairs to pack and then hit the trail. If you’re ever in Phuket…”

  “Good-bye, Seth. Convey my deepest sympathy to Mrs. Farraday.”

  Chapter Forty-five

  The great room was cloaked in shadow. Cleon lolled in a club chair in his dressing gown, listening to Willie Nelson and waving an empty martini glass in time with the music. He seemed to be staring up at the boars who stared back with their usual ennui.

  “Hello, Uncle Cleon.”

  “It ain’t polite to keep an old man waiting, especially one who’s a short-timer on this earth.” He pushed himself out of the chair and ambled over to the bar. The butt of a gun peeked out of the pocket of his dressing gown.

  His face was grim. No more the avuncular old charmer, he’d crossed some internal boundary. The rawness of his voice gave her goose flesh. Belatedly, she wished she’d brought Seth along for the reading of the indictment.

  He said, “Come have a drink with me.”

  “Why would I want to drink with someone who tried to have me killed?”

  “I told those bozos to handle you with kid gloves. But you can’t hardly find reliable help nowadays.”

  As if performing a sacrament, he spritzed a mist of vermouth into two chilled glasses, tonged a few cubes of ice into the old silver cocktail shaker, sloshed in a pint of gin and shook twice. “We’ve all had ourselves quite a time these last few days.” He poured the martinis and sank the olives. “Don’t just stand there. You called this meetin’. Are you comin’ in or not?”

  She lifted her shoulders and stepped through the door, crossing an internal boundary of her own.

  He handed her a glass and touched his to hers. “To the love that lies in a woman’s eyes…and lies and lies and lies.” He chuckled.

  She said, “It’s you who’ve told the lion’s share of the lies.”

  “I may have fudged the truth once or twice. It ain’t a capital offense.”

  “Murder is.”

  “The inspector tells us now that Wendell did the dirty. Couldn’t wait to inherit poor Dez’s money, I reckon.”

  “Oh, stop it. Save the innocent act for somebody who’ll buy it.”

  He sipped his martini and regarded her with glacial detachment. “I can see you ain’t satisfied with my story line. But that’s all right. What you believe is immaterial. It’s what the police believe that matters.”

  “How many false clues did you plant, Uncle Cleon?”

  “What with you and Thad unplantin’ ’em, I had my work cut out for me.”

  “Wendell didn’t know anything about the flash drive. What did he think I had?”

  “Aw, Neesha got all worked up and wrote him a mash note.”

  “Which you took.” She shook her head in disgust. “Why didn’t you just tell them you knew? Throw down the gauntlet and have it out? All this playacting garbage is sick. I would have thought it beneath you. Beneath the man I thought you were.”

  “You’re a smart girl, Dinah. Not wise like your mama, but smart. Swan, now, she knows what to bear down on and what to leave alone.”

  “Like your involvement in the drug trade? She let that alone.”

  His face was a wall. She could picture him sitting at the defense table staring down the prosecution’s witnesses with just that face.

  He said, “Go on and drink your martini. It’ll help you to refine your argument.”

  She took a galvanizing sip of the gin. “You’ve been dabbling with drugs for decades. In the beginning, when you were young and broke, you were probably just a courier. You were good at it, the way you’ve always been good at whatever you turned your hand to, and you were ambitious. Even after you became a successful attorney, after you were making legal money hand over fist, you couldn’t retire from drugs. You no longer had any physical contact with the product, of course. You just put up the money and hired Desmond Fisher as your go-between with the smugglers and retailers.”

  “Objection.” He fished the olive out of his martini, popped it into his mouth and rolled it around. “Supposition.”

  “Overruled,” she
said. “And don’t BS me.”

  “Both prosecutor and judge? Well, I reckon I’m in the right place to be tried by a kangaroo court.” A suggestion of the old wit tugged at the corner of his mouth, but she was no longer susceptible to his subversive charm.

  “Was it just for the purpose of framing Wendell that you killed Fisher or had he become too much of a loose cannon?”

  “Half and half, I’d say. Dez couldn’t lay off the bottle or politics, kept gettin’ hisself written up in the papers. He had a hankerin’ for publicity. He was feedin’ that unfortunate journalist, Mr. Hambrick, his usual crap about death with dignity, but Hambrick had his own pet peeve about Nigerians insinuatin’ themselves into the Aboriginal community. When he spotted Fisher with some of our Nigerian friends, well. One thing led to another. Can you believe not one of ’em had sense enough to make it look like an accident or weight down the body and throw it in the ocean?” He was as blasé as if he were talking about a blown play in a football game.

  “Your associates killed a man and that’s all you can say about it?”

  “It was a foul-up and I was riled, but it didn’t affect Dez’s life expectancy. I decided to kill him months ago.”

  Who was this monster? Dinah tried to throw a mental grappling hook back to the past, to catch onto some constant, some irreducible kernel of truth. But her memories were liars. The past had changed. “You must have gone to a lot of trouble tracking down Lucien’s forgeries. Why?”

  “The fool was turnin’ out copies like a damn rollin’ mill. Somebody had to clean up after him. I couldn’t have Swan see him end up in the pen.”

  “How’d the paintings end up in Fisher’s estate?”

  “Dez didn’t know they were fakes. I told him I’d laundered a few million in the art market and asked him to take title for me so Neesha wouldn’t get ’em. I humbled myself and told him she was whorin’ with a new man.”

  “You didn’t tell him it was Wendell?”

  “That didn’t fit my plan.” He finished his martini and poured himself another.

  “So Dez made his will in favor of Lucien and Wendell just out of the goodness of his heart?”

  “Drug smugglers ain’t much diff’rent from the folks down the road when it comes to parcelin’ out their holdings when they die. As you know, Dez was a bearcat about matters relatin’ to death. He had a medical directive and burial instructions more detailed than a pharaoh, but no up-to-date will. I was changin’ mine and advised him to do the same or his money would wind up in the government’s coffers fundin’ socialized medicine. He always had a soft spot for Maggie. I figured he’d make her and Wendell his beneficiaries and, since the art was mine, I told him to leave ’em to Lucien.”

  She said, “The copies started out as a joke. Lucien didn’t intend to sell them.”

  “People don’t fabricate affidavits and certificates of authenticity for what they don’t mean to sell, or put a million dollar price tag on their jokes.”

  “Lucien faked the documentation?”

  “Somebody did. Lucien claims it was his friend. He wasn’t supposed to sell ’em. Lucien went back to New York City and got into it with the fella. But it’s all water over the dam. I’ve pulled his chestnuts out of the fire.”

  She wondered if Cleon had bought back Lucien’s forgeries or stolen them. She thought about what Margaret said about Swan’s cygnets. “So Lucien gets a pass for his sins, but not Wendell?”

  “There’s sins and there’s sins. Bein’ cuckolded by my own spawn is where I draw the line.”

  “If you hated Wendell so much, why didn’t you kill him, too?”

  He emptied the last of the gin into his glass and stepped behind the bar to mix another pitcher. “I thought about killin’ him. But a bullet’s too quick and easy. Durin’ my first round of chemo, I commenced to reflect on a more judicial revenge. Bein’ deprived of his freedom and his family for all time, that’ll be Wendell’s punishment.” The ice clattering in the shaker sounded like Chinese New Year. “You better finish that drink, sugah. You’re gonna need it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He topped up her glass with his right hand and with his left, pulled the gun out of his pocket. Its short barrel stuck out from between his knobby fingers like an animal’s snout.

  Her body tautened. “What are you…?”

  “Carry on with your prosecution. I’m interested to hear your summin’ up.”

  She tried to pick up her thread of thought, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off the gun. “You set Wendell up as a fall guy long before there was any adultery by persuading Fisher to give him an interest in the fish processing plant. I guess the connection to a pillar of the community lent a semblance of legitimacy to the business if it should ever come under scrutiny.”

  “At the time, there wasn’t much risk.”

  “You turned it into one. His partnership with Fisher, the will, the flash drive, the prints on the knife. What other clues did you rig to incriminate Wendell? I assume there’s a dusting of drugs in that sack of money you and Fisher brought home from Katherine.”

  He belted his martini and poured another without taking his hand off the gun. A lesser man would be bombed by now, but the gin seemed to have no effect on Cleon except to make his eyes more glacial. “Are you restin’ your case?”

  The thought of what might happen after the prosecution rested unnerved her. She strained her ears. Maybe Seth hadn’t left the house yet. Maybe if she screamed…

  “What’s th’ matter? Cat got your tongue?”

  “Apart from sending her lover to prison, what revenge have you cooked up for Neesha?”

  “A right good one. I’ve spent all my assets and then some. All of the clean money, and I’ve borrowed heavily against the farm and other properties. I’ve emptied my retirement and partnership accounts and short-changed the I.R.S. by several hundred thousand. I’m leavin’ the whole shebang to my darlin’ wife and if she can hang onto that diamond ring after my creditors are done pickin’ over the bones, she’ll be lucky.” He looked at his watch. “Well, there’s your Perry Mason confession. I won’t be repeatin’ it on the stand.”

  “I can,” said Dinah. “I can testify that you confessed to everything.”

  “Anything you repeat of our conversation would be hearsay. You’re not wearin’ a wire, are you, sugah?”

  I am an idiot, she thought. If she’d asked Jacko to fit her up with a wire, her problems would be over now. Not to mention Wendell’s problems. “I’m not wearing a wire.”

  “I believe you.” He dispatched the last of his martini, picked up the gun, and motioned her toward the door. “Let’s move out onto the veranda.”

  “Uncle Cleon, no. Let’s call Inspector Newby. You don’t want to do this to Wendell.”

  “Time’s past for an appeal.” He took her elbow in a vise-like grip and strong-armed her out the door.

  “Let go of me. You’re despicable. Consumed with revenge.”

  “Lay out your facts and save the rhetoric for closin’.”

  He released her arm and pointed the gun at her. The man who’d taken her to Disneyland for her tenth birthday was pointing a gun at her. Fear flooded her thoughts, fear not just that he would kill himself but that he would kill her. If Cleon had ever loved her, it made no difference now. He was unhinged.

  “Actus non facit reum nisi sit rea. In the eyes of the law, it ain’t always what we do that makes us guilty, it’s what we’re thinkin’ when we do it.”

  “Did you have a guilty mind when you watched Dez Fisher die?”

  “I thought I was doin’ the world a service.”

  “What do you feel guilty about, Uncle Cleon? The drugs you’ve sold must have destroyed countless lives over the years.”

  “Doin’ drugs ain’t compulsory. It’s one of a million ways people can waste their lives if they’ve a mind to. I did what I did and in the end, the only judgment that matters is my own.”
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  She played the daughter card. “You care what my mother thinks.”

  “That’s as may be.” He frowned and looked at his watch. “My extracurricular money is in a numbered account in Panama, Banco Dorado de Colon. The account number’s on a slip of paper in my right-hand pocket along with some travelin’ money. I want you to take charge of it, dole it out to the twins on an as-needed basis as you see fit.”

  Fear changed to disbelief. “What in the name of God are you talking about?”

  He said, “Don’t spoil ’em with a lot of expensive falderal. Make it go as far as you can. Thad’ll have to give up whinin’ to that pushover psychologist of his. But he’ll prob’ly be in the reformatory before too much longer and have a court-appointed shrink. Give ’em college if they want it and the balance when they turn thirty.”

  Disbelief ratcheted toward fury. “They’re children. Your children. My God, how can you make them dependent on dirty drug money?”

  “What they don’t know can’t hurt ’em. It didn’t hurt you.”

  She hated him. “What makes you think I won’t keep the money for myself?”

  “You won’t. And if you don’t take charge of it, the kids get nada from me. I’ve left instructions. It’s you or nobody. The feds will probably freeze Fisher’s assets, so I reckon th’ young’uns will turn out paupers without your good offices.”

  His callousness made her blood boil. “Lucien was right about you. You never loved any of your children.”

  “I love you. I love Lucien.”

  “No, you don’t. You didn’t buy Lucien’s forgeries back for him because you love him and you didn’t establish a trust fund for me because you love me. You did it for my mother. Everything you’ve done since the moment you met her has been for Swan.” Suddenly, the years of ambiguous undertones and subliminal impressions coalesced into a lurid vision. A body was flying through the windshield of a truck. “You were there the night my father died!”

  He didn’t blink. “You’ll prob’ly hear a lot of guff from Neesha ’til she lands herself a new sugardaddy. Don’t give in to her cryin’ or let her soft-soap you for more money than’s needed. And pay yourself a fat commission. I want you to. It’s your inheritance, as well as the twins’.”