by Jan Burke
Bloodlines
( Irene Kelly - 9 )
Jan Burke
Synopsis:
The year is 1958. O’Connor, a young reporter with the Las Piernas News Express, is desperate to discover who has perpetrated a savage attack on his mentor, Jack Corrigan. In and out of consciousness, Corrigan claims to have witnessed the burial of a bloodstained car on a farm, but his reputation as a heavy drinker calls his strange story into question. In a seemingly unrelated mystery, a yacht bearing four members of the wealthy Ducane family disappears during a storm off the coast. An investigation finds that the Ducane home has been broken into; a nursemaid has been killed; and Max, the infant heir, has gone missing. Corrigan recovers his health, but despite a police investigation and his own tireless inquiries, the mysteries of the buried car and the whereabouts of Maxwell Ducane haunt him until his death.
Twenty years after that fateful night, in her first days as a novice reporter working for managing editor O’Connor, Irene Kelly covers the groundbreaking ceremony for a shopping center — which unexpectedly yields the unearthing of a buried car. In the trunk are human remains. Are those of the infant heir among them? If so, who is the young man who has recently changed his name to Max Ducane? Again the trail goes maddeningly, perhaps suspiciously, cold.
Until today. Irene, now married to homicide detective Frank Harriman, is a veteran reporter facing the impending closing of the Las Piernas News Express. With circulation down and young reporters fresh out of journalism school replacing longtime staffers, Irene can’t help but wish for the good old days when she worked with O’Connor. So when the baffling kidnap-burial case resurfaces, Irene’s tenacious love for her mentor and journalistic integrity far outweigh any fears or trepidation. Determined to make a final splash for her beloved paper and solve the mystery that plagued O’Connor until his death, Irene pursues a story that reunites her with her past and may end her career — and her life.
Bloodlines
Jan Burke
The ninth book in the Irene Kelly series
Copyright © 2005 by Jan Burke
In memory of my beloved uncle,
ROBERT M. FLYNN,
reporter for the Evansville Press
PART I
PAPERBOY
Saturday, 11:45 P.M.
January 4, 1958
1
IF THE BLONDE HAD NOT PUT HER HAND ON JACK CORRIGAN’S THIGH, HE might have awakened in his own bed, rather than facedown on the side of a farm road in the middle of the night. Then he would have missed the burial.
Given his condition that night, he might have slept through everything that happened, but a cold wind cut through his clothing, rousing him. He rolled painfully onto his back and found himself looking up dizzily into the rustling, moonlit leaves of tall, thin trees. His perspective was marred by the alcohol in his veins, and the fact that his left eye was nearly swollen shut.
He closed his eyes and tried to recall how he had ended up here. He remembered the party and the blonde…
The blonde had smiled and said something to him, then she took another drag from her Lucky Strike.
Corrigan saw her heavily lipsticked red mouth form words, but he couldn’t hear what they were. The rock-’n’-roll band was on a break, but someone had turned the radio up, and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” was rattling the windowpanes. Conversation in the crowded room competed with the music by notching up the shouting level. An old injury kept him from joining the dancers. No, he admitted — even if his ankle hadn’t troubled him, this was not his kind of music. You old fogey, he told himself, and not yet out of your forties.
Not his kind of music, and not his kind of party, which was part of the problem with his mood tonight. He wouldn’t have come, but Katy had sent him a note, specifically asking him to be here.
Despite the note, neither Katy nor her mother, Lillian Vanderveer Linworth, had seemed especially friendly when he arrived. That didn’t surprise him. Harold Linworth, the birthday girl’s father — and Lillian’s husband — had politely despised him for years.
Katy’s in-laws were there as well, Thelma and Barrett Ducane. Barrett was already hitting the sauce, but Thelma looked almost sober for once. Jack planned to catch up to Barrett as soon as possible.
Thelma let it drop that they had just talked Katy and their son Todd into coming along for an after-hours party on their yacht. A moonlight cruise on their new fifty-foot Chris-Craft Catalina.
“I bought the Sea Dreamer for Thelma for Christmas,” Barrett said. “She’s quite the sailor, my little gal.”
If Thelma was supposed to be the captain of this idiotic voyage, that explained the sobriety. She was careful with her toys. Although the Chris-Craft was by no means the most expensive boat they could afford — pocket change to them, he was sure — Jack thought of how tightfisted they were with their boys, Todd and Warren, and how readily they spent money on themselves. He asked if Warren would be joining them on the boat.
Thelma frowned, openly displeased by the question.
“I told Warren to come along,” Barrett said, “but he’s off with some of his cronies.”
“Surprised to see you here, Jack,” Thelma said. “You write for the society pages of the Express now?”
“Should be a nice night for a cruise, almost a full moon,” he said, and as he walked away, added, under his breath, “perfect for lunatics like you, Thelma.” Going out for a pleasure cruise on a January night. That bitch was nuts. She was probably trying to irritate Lillian, who had once been a close friend, but now had little to do with her. Lillian wouldn’t like Katy being pulled away from the party by the Ducanes.
Lillian had always opposed Katy’s marriage to Todd Ducane. She had made bigger plans for her daughter, and Jack supposed that after her falling-out with Thelma all those years ago, the idea of Katy marrying Thelma’s son had been a bitter pill to swallow.
For once, Jack and Lillian were in agreement. Jack had never liked any of the Ducanes, including Todd. The Toad, as Jack thought of him. But Katy had rebelled. He knew she had since come to see her mistake, but so far, she hadn’t rectified it.
Lillian hadn’t chosen so well herself, Jack thought, watching as the family gathered for photos. Harold Linworth had little more than his wealth to recommend him. Maybe that had been enough for Lillian. At forty, Lillian was still a looker. But standing next to Katy — Jack smiled to himself. Katy was a little subdued tonight, but still she had that quality, a fire within that drew others to her warmth. Not all of Lily’s beauty could match it.
He watched as parents and in-laws stood next to Katy and Todd, the six of them smiling stiffly as a photographer went through the juggling act of focus, shoot, eject the used flashbulb, put a new one in, focus, shoot, and so on.
Why wasn’t Warren around? The Ducane brothers were close. He glanced at Thelma and thought he had his answer. He was fairly sure all it would take to keep Warren away would be a demand by Thelma that he attend the party. There was the difference in the two boys — Todd acquiesced to their every demand, hoping to catch crumbs from their table. Warren rebelled. If that was what kept him away tonight, Jack had to admire him for it.
What the hell was he doing here himself?
But Jack had never been able to turn down Katy’s requests. Her twenty-first birthday. Katy an adult. What nonsense. She was already a wife and mother. Yet to Jack, she was still a child herself.
Her elegant appearance this evening hadn’t changed his thoughts on that — all dressed up in a demure evening gown and long gloves, wearing the Vanderveer family diamonds at her neck. Her dark hair was pinned up in a sophisticated style, her brown eyes emphasized by carefully applied liner.
The overall effect had been spoiled
somewhat by the pug. Corrigan hated that damned dog and seeing her holding it tonight angered him. Max, her two-month-old son, left at home — attended to by some stranger, a hired nurse — but the dog in her arms. Maybe that was the sort of family life the Ducanes might like, distanced from their children, but Jack hated to see Katy influenced by Todd in that way.
When Katy greeted him, she leaned forward a little, and the dog squirmed awkwardly between them. She shook Jack’s hand, saying, “What an unexpected pleasure.” Her sardonic tone would lead any listener to believe he was a party crasher. If she hadn’t softly added, for his ear only, “Later,” he would have turned on his heel and left.
He did try to leave at one point — even had his hat and coat in hand. Katy had hurried over to him and taken them from him. “Don’t be silly,” she said, handing the hat to the butler, Hastings, and smoothing the coat into a neatness that didn’t seem natural to it.
“Careful, you’ll ruin your dress,” he said, noticing that he needed to take the coat to the cleaners.
“To hell with the dress,” she said, and flung the coat around her shoulders. She smiled at him, eyes bright with mischief. “Now, this is comfort. And it reeks of cigarettes and spilled booze and — what’s this?” Pretending to sniff the collar. “Ah, yes, ink. You must have cut yourself.”
He laughed.
She took it off again, handing it to Hastings. “Uncle Jack—”
“Does your mother know you still call me that?”
“Never mind her,” she said angrily.
“On the outs again, are you? Is that why you’ve asked to talk to me?”
“No,” she said, “no, of course not. Oh, Uncle Jack, please. Please stay until we can talk. You always tell me the truth, and I need—” But she looked up and saw her husband making his way toward them. “Oh damn, here comes Todd.”
“Leaving, Jack?” Todd asked hopefully.
“No, just getting my cigarette lighter out of my coat pocket.”
“Oh… well, excuse us, but there are some people waiting to talk to Kathleen.”
Katy leaned closer to Jack and kissed his cheek, then again whispered, “Later,” before allowing Todd to steer her away.
Still, she had made no effort to come near him since.
Corrigan was drinking heavily, as usual, but tonight he knew himself for an especially sorry sort of drunk. “Self-pity makes a lousy chaser,” he said aloud.
“What?” the blonde shouted back, confused.
“Nothing.” He grabbed two martinis from a passing waiter’s tray and handed one to the blonde. She smiled. He thought she said thanks.
He looked away from the blonde and scanned the crowd, wondering if he’d catch another glimpse of Lillian or Katy. Unlikely, given the press of humanity between his seat and where Lillian and her daughter were holding court. Trouble with a January party was, most years it was too cold outside on the veranda, so nobody ever had any breathing room. He downed the martini and watched for another waiter.
He would never, so long as he lived, understand the rich. Why had Katy wanted him to be here? A whim, no doubt. She was a bit of a troublemaker, Katy. Kathleen. He was one of the few who ever called her Katy. He smiled, thinking of how it fired her up when he did so. He was a bit of a troublemaker himself.
He thought about that whispered “Later,” and about a look he thought he had seen in her eye, something just before Todd the Toad ushered her away from him. It made him wonder why the birthday girl, normally sunny and vivacious, looked so unhappy most of the night. He meant to find out. Curiosity was his besetting sin, and a necessary part of his work as a reporter.
Most of her friends would not believe anything amiss. The smile was still there and as usual a crowd of her admirers near at hand. They didn’t know her as well as Jack did.
After a while it was clear that the Toad was on guard and ready to maneuver Jack away from Katy whenever he drew near. The Toad hovered over her tonight — lighting her cigarettes, making sure her half-empty martini glasses were exchanged for full ones, feeding canapés to her dog. Jack decided to bide his time and drink up Lillian and Harold’s expensive booze until he could evade their son-in-law.
One of the attentive servants made his way to Corrigan and exchanged the empty glass for a fresh drink.
The party was a success, if you measured such things by the lack of room to move, the sound of raucous laughter, the cloud of smoke hanging thickly in the air. He wondered what Lillian really thought of it. He was surprised at the roughness of some of the characters he saw here tonight. Todd’s friends, he supposed. Harold probably hated to see such riffraff crossing the Linworths’ Italian marble floors. Not that all of the Linworths’ friends and acquaintances were on the up-and-up.
The blonde interrupted his musings with the hand on his thigh. Less than an instant later, he felt a hand on his collar, pulling back hard and cutting off his breath, then yanking him up onto his unsteady feet. A big, fair-haired man with a crewcut was shouting something about keeping his hands off his wife, and before Jack could so much as clench a fist, the giant had landed a blow that knocked him out cold.
Corrigan felt the wind and the chilled earth beneath him and shivered into something like wakefulness. He had passed out again. For how long? He slowly rolled onto his stomach and then pushed himself to his knees. He tried to take inventory. He was sore every damned where. His bad ankle — the one that had doomed his efforts to enlist — hurt like hell. Nothing new there.
He felt along the ground for his hat, but saw no sign of it. He half-hoped the lummox who had attacked him — and yes, at least one other man — had left it with his coat at Lillian’s place. If not, it had probably blown away. Corrigan sighed. Young O’Connor told him hats were going out of style, but Corrigan couldn’t feel dressed without one.
Still on his knees, he patted his vest, pleased to find the pocket watch still on its chain, not as pleased when the crystal fell out in little pieces. The hour hand was gone. He put the watch back in its pocket, feeling the sore spot where it had been driven into a rib. He had a bruise on his thigh from where something similar had happened with his keys. He eased his cut and swollen fingers into his pants pockets to make sure the keys were still there, and was relieved to find them. A small saint’s medal had been lost off the chain, but at least he’d be able to get back into his house without calling O’Connor. And checking his back pocket, he discovered he still had his wallet. He hadn’t been robbed.
He rose painfully to his feet, staggering from the double influence of blows and drink.
It was a noisy, shadowy world he had awakened to, one smelling of earth and something medicinal — menthol or camphor. No, he slowly realized, it was eucalyptus. He was standing beneath a eucalyptus, along the outer edge of a narrow grove of the spindly giants, trees probably planted as a windbreak. On the other side of the road, a barbed-wire fence surrounded an empty pasture; in the distance, the tin roof of a dairy barn reflected the moonlight. He was wondering if he could make it that far, maybe sleep it off in the barn, when he heard the sound of an engine starting up somewhere behind him.
Corrigan was seldom a cautious man, but the beating had shaken him, so he stepped back into the moving shadows of the trees, concerned that the giant and his friend might be seeking further amusement at his expense. He frowned at the injustice of it. He hadn’t known the woman was accompanied, let alone married, and only the inertia brought on by a forgotten number of martinis had kept him sitting near her as she pressed her attentions on him.
Except for a fleeting image of awakening once in a sedan — a Bel Air? What made him think that? A moment of being propped up against its two-tone paint job? He wasn’t sure. He had no certain idea of how they had brought him here. He thought he remembered smelling the woman’s perfume coming from somewhere within the car, but he couldn’t swear that she had been in the sedan with them.
He watched the road for several minutes before he understood that no car was on it. H
e moved forward toward the source of the noise, his usual slight limp now a hobbling, uneven gait. He paused at the edge of the grove, peered out from behind one of the wider trees. He could only see from his right eye now, which added to his sense of disorientation.
Before him lay a fallow field. His attention was drawn to an object that sat not far from him: a blue Buick sedan.
The Buick had clearly been in an accident; the front end was crumpled into sharp folds that angled back toward the windshield, so that the car seemed to be forever frozen in a posture of flinching, its metal-toothed grill caught in a buckled grimace. The windshield was darkened and webbed with cracks.
Corrigan steadied himself against the tree, fighting memories of another car accident, long ago. The motor sound drew his attention again. It was not coming from the car, but from somewhere beyond. Not a car motor, but a diesel engine — perhaps a truck or a bus. Where was it? He heard the engine strain as gears shifted.
Suddenly there was light, light from the ground — a beam tilting over the field at a forty-five-degree angle. He watched in disbelief as headlights emerged somewhere behind the car, seemingly from the earth itself. A tractor, coming toward him.
The headlights of the tractor shone through the car from behind, eerily illuminating the Buick’s interior, the shattered windshield. Corrigan’s stomach lurched as he saw the fractured glass was covered with a brownish red glaze. Bloodstains.
The sight of that blood made Corrigan obey an impulse to hide himself from the driver of the tractor. He moved clumsily farther into the trees and crouched near a low, leafy branch. His head was pounding now, pulsing with the throb of the tractor’s motor, refusing to cooperate with his struggle to comprehend what he was seeing.
The tractor circled the car and came to a stop. The gears shifted again and the tractor stood idling as a small, wiry man climbed from the seat. He wore a cap and kept his head down as he marched back to the car, a heavy chain on his shoulder. Corrigan heard more than saw the man attach the chain to the back axle of the Buick.