He groaned theatrically, squeezing his eyes shut, his shoulders sagging. “What is it they say, be careful what you wish for?”
“As if you weren’t about to die before you got me alone in there,” she said, cocking her head toward the bedroom.
He popped off the stool and wrapped his arms around Jillian, who had changed into a yellow sundress with skinny shoulder straps. “And I’m ready for another round right now if it wouldn’t scare the hell out of Andrew.”
She laughed and pushed him away. “I’ll remind you of that at three-thirty in the morning when you’re begging me to let you sleep.”
In the living room, Quint turned on the TV and ran the channels until he found a baseball game. The Mets were in the middle of a three-game home series with the Red Sox and the Sox were leading 3-0 in the fourth inning. Quint leaned back thinking the Mets were going to get slaughtered. The next thing he remembered was Jillian shaking him awake.
“Quint, Andrew isn’t back yet.”
Quint rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “How long’s he been gone?” He was having a hard time waking up.
“Over two hours. The trail isn’t that long, ninety minutes max, and that’s if you were walking at my grandmother’s pace and stopped to pick up every rock.” Jillian stood over Quint, a worried look on her face.
“Andrew’s a real social person. He probably met another kid and they’re playing at his house or on the beach.” He looked at the television and saw that the score was now 9-2 at the top of the eighth inning.
“I think we need to look for him,” Jillian said.
“Okay, you’re right.” He forced himself off the couch and found his flip-flops. “Why don’t you go along the shore and I’ll backtrack through the woods? We’ll meet somewhere near Pelican Point. I’m sure we’ll find him pretty quickly.”
***
The temperature had been a warm 83 degrees when they’d been playing in the pool earlier in the afternoon, but four hours later, in the shadows of the woods, Quint wished he’d worn long pants. A shiver ran over his arms, and he hurried through the thicket of black oak and white birch along the narrow hiking path.
“Andrew, where are you hiding?” Quint yelled, not really believing his brother was still on this stretch of trail.
Ten minutes later he passed through the last of the trees and followed the path past a patch of waving grasses and small shrubs. A cool breeze carried the crisp smell of the ocean, and he heard the cry of gulls overhead.
“Quit playing games, Andrew,” Quint yelled, his frustration rising with every step. Quint pictured his brother playing at another kid’s house, lost in his own world with no idea of the time or the fact that Andrew and Jillian were looking for him.
Then he remembered the many times he’d disappeared at supper time, his mother calling for him. Now he knew how she felt, and he wanted to take Andrew by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. He also realized he was responsible for his brother, and pin pricks of heat flushed his cheeks as he thought about how he’d deceived his parents.
Quint skirted a cluster of rocks known to the locals as Pelican Point, disturbing a gull tearing apart a small fish it must have found washed up on the shore. The gull shrieked its displeasure at Quint, and flew away with a ragged and bloody strip of flesh still in its beak. He yelled for Andrew once more, hearing only the cry of the gull in response.
The sun glinted across the still waters of the sound and Quint stared at the sailboats to see if any of them carried an eight-year-old boy as a passenger. He told himself there was nothing to worry about. Jillian and her sisters had played on this little peninsula since they were younger than Andrew. It was a perfectly safe playground for kids. Despite that, Quint‘s heartbeat increased as a feeling of unease swept over him.
Where the hell are you, Andrew?
One hundred yards away, Quint spotted a figure walking in his direction. He recognized Jillian’s sundress even from that distance, and a hot sensation warmed his groin as he recalled their afternoon couplings. He waved at her, but Jillian kept walking and Quint figured she must not have seen him. When she started running along the beach, Quint thought she was running to greet him.
Jillian stopped alongside a miniature inlet cut into the shoreline, her head down, hands on her knees. He didn’t have time to consider what she might be staring at before Jillian screamed. The anguished cry knifed through the stillness of what had been a perfect summer’s day. Quint felt a cold hand grip his heart, ripping his breath away as Jillian’s scream continued to build and she fell to her knees, holding her face in both hands.
With great effort Quint willed his legs to move, and he began running toward the spot where Jillian had fallen. His athlete’s legs took control and he ran like an opposing lineman was chasing him, legs pumping, arms churning. He told himself there were any number of reasons why Jillian had screamed, but he couldn’t imagine what they were as he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. His flip-flops had flown off his feet after a few steps and his toes dug into the sand. He kept running, cutting the distance down to seventy-five yards, then fifty. At about thirty-five yards he looked up and spotted something lying in the water beside Jillian.
Quint couldn’t quite make out the pale form at Jillian’s feet. Perhaps his mind wouldn’t allow him to recognize what his thudding heart already knew. He ran faster, whipped by an icy fear. Ten feet away he skidded to a stop.
He tried to convince himself those weren’t the purple baggy shorts his brother had worn when he last saw him. They couldn’t be, especially since they were pulled down, bunched up around the ankles. It couldn’t be Andrew.
Jillian had stopped screaming, one hand to her mouth, one hand caressing the boy’s straw-colored hair. Quint attempted to move but his legs refused to go any farther. He stared at his brother with complete disbelief. A terrible taste flooded into his mouth and he thought he would vomit. He felt blood pulsing in his ears, a cruel drummer marching through his head.
Bloody bands crisscrossed Andrew’s chest and abdomen. With a massive effort of will Quint forced himself to move closer. One step then another until he realized the curved bands of blood covering his brother were actually gaping wounds exposing muscles and organs as though Andrew had been caught in the blades of some giant blender. Perhaps his brother had been run over by a motorboat, he thought, but then he noticed the thin line of crimson beneath Andrew’s chin. His throat had been cut.
Quint fell to his knees and grabbed his little brother in his arms. “No,” he mouthed to the boy. “No, you can’t be dead.”
He didn’t know how long he sat clutching Andrew’s savaged body before Jillian shook his arm. “Quint, you have to put him down.” One of Jillian’s sisters was with the state attorney’s office and she knew a body shouldn’t be moved.
“We need to call the police.”
Quint looked at her as if she’d been speaking in tongues. He rocked back and forth with his brother’s body, trying to comprehend how such a thing had happened.
“And,” she said, “we have to call your parents.”
THIRTY
Closing the photo album, I returned it to the nightstand drawer. Dudley purred and rubbed against me, trying to push me back into bed. But sleep was not an option for me now as my mind relived the awful telephone call to my father’s hotel room in New York City. To this day it was the single worst moment of my life, aside from finding Andrew’s body.
My father never forgave me for my deception, blaming me for my brother’s death. At first he verbally flayed me with a fury I never thought possible. I accepted it as my rightful penance. I may not have wielded the weapon, but we both knew my deceit was responsible for the horrible things visited upon Andrew. His fury eventually cooled and solidified into an impenetrable stone wall keeping me at bay.
I tried numerous times to break through my father’s seething anger and resentment, but the pain was too intense, his anguish too deep. I finally stopped trying.
There was no going back for either of us, and in the past dozen years we’ve not spoken more than ten words to each other.
Recently, my mother let me know that my father, now in his late seventies, would be open to reconciliation. She urged me to call him, but the twin obstacles of time and guilt prevented me from picking up the phone. The fact that Andrew’s murder remained unsolved only added fuel to the smoldering fires burning between us. As much as I wished it could be otherwise, the gap between us had grown too wide to bridge. Like acid leaking out of a battery, corroding vital contacts, all sparks of connectivity between us dissolved after Andrew’s death.
***
At my office the next morning, I sorted the stack of mail, tossed the obvious garbage in the trash, put the bills aside to be paid later, and picked up the new edition of PI Magazine. When I lifted the magazine, I uncovered a small manila envelope with a St. Augustine postmark but no return address.
Slitting it open, I pulled out a photocopy of a legal document. At the top were typed the words:
CODICIL TO:
Last Will and Testament
OF
CLAYTON F. HENDERSON
I inspected the envelope again to see if I’d missed a cover letter, but saw only the legal document. The three pages contained a restatement of Article III of Henderson’s will declaring the distribution of his Tangible Personal Property along with his Residuary Estate. A list of real estate holdings, cash bequests, and assorted articles of art and furniture followed.
My eyes returned to the top paragraph where I noted the execution date six months earlier on February 10th. Why, I wondered, would someone send me a copy of Henderson’s codicil unless it had something to do with his death?
I sat down and read from the top.
I, CLAYTON FORD HENDERSON, a resident of St. Johns County, Florida, and a citizen of the United States, make, publish and declare this codicil to my Last Will and Testament, executed by me on the 10th day of February 2006.
I. I hereby restate Article III of my Last Will and Testament as follows:
ARTICLE III
Tangible Personal Property
I give and devise certain items of my tangible personal items to the persons named in the last dated writing signed by me and in existence at the time of my death.
The rest of the paragraph went on to list his personal representatives and how his remaining property should be divided. I quickly scanned through the list of property and cash bequests ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 to be given to various entities, including the St. Augustine Lighthouse Foundation and Flagler College.
I turned the page and a couple of items jumped out at me. Tucked between bequests to the University of Florida English Department and a few area charities was the name Jarrod Watts. According to the codicil, Watts was to receive $75,000 upon Henderson’s death and allowed to live in the Martinez House for one year, although the house had been deeded to the St. Augustine Historical Association. Henderson liked and appreciated Watts, so I understood why he might want to reward him for his services.
The next beneficiary was Erin Marrano. Henderson had willed her some real estate in the historic district along with the sum of one million dollars.
Watts I could understand, but why Erin Marrano? Why gift her with a million dollars if they were only passing acquaintances? It didn’t make any sense to me. What was the connection between them?
Lights flashed in my brain and pieces began to fall into place.
According to Jack Fuller, Henderson turned his twins over to a crooked adoption attorney in Huntsville, Alabama. Erin told me she taught in Huntsville before moving to St. Augustine. Could she be the poet’s daughter? And what if Henderson followed her to St. Augustine to be close to her? It made a lot of sense. I could see a man of Henderson’s sensibilities stewing in his homemade gumbo of guilt and remorse. Seeing the end of his life approaching in the rearview mirror, I imagined the old man might try to set things right with the child he abandoned.
Looking at the codicil, I wondered if he ever revealed their kinship to Erin. I doubted it, although Henderson seemed upbeat when I visited him before his death. Maybe he planned to tell her. I followed that assumption with another thought. What if he did tell her and she rebuffed him? Rejection has provided the motive for everything from murder to suicide, and it might have literally pushed him over the edge. If so, then Buck Marrano’s contention that Henderson committed suicide made even more sense.
I was making some wild-ass guesses now, but I thought about father and daughter discovering each other after all these years. He must have followed her to St. Augustine. If the two of them were able to overcome the past then Henderson’s final years might have brought him peace and comfort. Too bad his remaining time had been cut short.
***
One hour later, I pulled into Erin Marrano’s driveway and turned off the ignition. I had called from my office and she was expecting me. I trailed her to a sunny room looking out on a well-landscaped back yard. A long, narrow flowerbed bisected the yard with blooming rose bushes and hydrangeas. Flagstones led to a small pond with a terraced waterfall to the left of the bed, and to several smaller gardens on the right where doves, woodpeckers and jays swooped in to the bird feeders spotted throughout the gardens.
“Would you like something to drink?”
When I said no she sat across from me at the round, glass-topped table. “You must be making progress, Mr. Mitchell. You said you had some new information.” Sunlight streaming through the windows danced across her blue eyes, which at the moment were staring hypnotically into my own. I looked at the manila envelope in my hands to break the spell.
Erin followed my gaze to the envelope and pointed to it. “Does that have something to do with my husband’s murder?”
“I’m not sure.”
She gave me one of those you’re not making any sense looks, so I jumped right in. “This came to my office today.” I placed the envelope on the table.
She glanced at it then back to me. “Yes.”
I pulled the codicil out of the envelope and showed it to her. “Have you seen this before?”
Her eyebrows shot up and she shook her head slowly. “No, why would you think I’ve seen it?”
“I may have mentioned at one of our other meetings that Mr. Henderson had some baggage in his past. There was no reason to go into detail with you at the time.”
“And now?”
“If I’m right about this, it explains why you’re a beneficiary in Clayton Henderson’s will.”
“He included me in his will?”
I told her about Henderson’s marriage to the only child of a wealthy Mississippi industrialist. How his wife inherited a fortune after her parents were killed in a plane crash, and how she later drowned in the family swimming pool.
Erin listened quietly to my tale of the sad family saga, how Henderson had been a suspect in his wife’s death, but later cleared for lack of evidence.
“Shortly after his wife’s death he moved to Huntsville with his infant twins, a boy and a girl. He gave them up for adoption.”
I could see her mind working behind those azure eyes. I picked up Henderson’s codicil and flipped to the second page. Pushing it toward her, I pointed to the section with her bequest. “This is why I thought you needed to know about Henderson’s children.”
She lifted the codicil off the table and studied it for a full minute before looking at me and asking, “You think I’m his daughter?” Erin Marrano’s voice trembled with emotion and a shimmering film glazed her eyes.
“You told me you were from Huntsville. A year after you moved to St. Augustine, Henderson retired from his position at the University of Florida and bought the Martinez House.”
A single tear tumbled from her left eye and trickled down her cheek.
I tapped the codicil with my forefinger. “I believe this was his mea culpa. I’m guessing he would have told you the truth if he hadn’t died.”
Erin remained
silent, the tears dripping from her face and onto the table.
“You didn’t know?” I asked her.
“How could I? We were acquaintances, but he never told me he was my father.”
She stared at the document, and I tried to imagine her thoughts at the moment. Was she cursing Henderson for abandoning her? Or was she sorry for all the years they never had together? The shock of a million-dollar bequest would only add to the swirling emotions she must be feeling.
Tears cut tracks through her make-up, and she sniffed loudly before asking, “My brother, what happened to him?”
“He died of scarlet fever when he was eighteen months old. I’m sorry.”
Erin pushed her chair back from the table and stood. For a second I thought she might bolt from the room, but she stared at the codicil then at me with wounded eyes, tears streaming down her face.
Her anguish reached out to me. In the last forty-eight hours this woman’s world had collapsed. Her husband murdered, house burgled, and now she learned her father abandoned her along with a twin brother she never knew she had. Without thinking, I moved around the table behind her, and held her. Her shoulders sagged against my chest.
If I tried to objectively analyze my actions at that moment I’d probably tell myself I was only offering solace to a person in need of human comfort. But when she turned to face me, it became more difficult to focus on anything but the intoxicating scent of her perfume and the heat of her body against mine.
Objectivity flew out the window. Her eyes sought mine, our heads came together and my mouth found hers. For a long moment we lost ourselves in that kiss, tongues probing, the fullness of her breasts against my chest. I held my breath as we clung together until sanity at last returned, and we stepped away from each other.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped breathlessly. “That was inappropriate and unprofessional.”
She shook her head and offered a wan smile I couldn’t decipher. “There’s no need to apologize, but you should probably go now.”
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