by Tim Cockey
“Was it that you wanted to strangle your husband’s neck? After all the years and all of your forbearance, and here he was planning to have a child with his new, young chippy? Didn’t that make you want to tear his eyes out?”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
“Or maybe even shoot him with that little pistol of yours?”
“I lied to you,” she said, smiling grimly. “I’ve never shot that gun.”
“Did you think about it then?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Well, how about the girlfriend then? What about her? Did it cross your mind to take out some revenge on her? You couldn’t have been too thrilled about this little development in your husband’s life, could you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Helen Waggoner. Your brother-in-law did give you the name, am I right?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And did you pass it on to your son?”
“Why don’t you come to the point?”
“I plan to. I’m coming to it. Now, you and I know that Jeffrey tracked down Helen where she worked and tried to dissuade her from this whole business, don’t we? What did he tell you after he got back?”
“Nothing, really. Jeffrey told me that he had had a big fight with her, and that he thought she was cheap trash through and through. I told him that that didn’t surprise me in the slightest. If you knew Richard—”
“Mother!”
Joan Bennett pushed away from the windowsill, then immediately sank back onto it. I kept my focus on Ann Kingman.
“Let me just ask you right out, Ann. Did you have anything to do with Helen’s murder?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you didn’t.”
She didn’t thank me. I hadn’t expected her to. I shifted my attention to Daniel Kingman.
“You told me in your office yesterday that your brother had been … the word you used was ‘prolific.’ You suggested that over the years he has sent quite a number of women to you to ‘take care of.’ Any idea how many women that would be?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Is that because you don’t remember, or because you don’t want to.”
“Do we have to go into this?”
“Fine. Do you remember a time fairly long ago? I don’t know, I think we’re going back twenty-some odd years? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Do you recall helping your brother out way back then? Do you know what I’m talking about here, Dr. Kingman?”
“Yes.”
“Help me out then. Was this the first time your brother had come to you for this kind of help? Or was it just the first time since he had been married?”
“What difference does it make?”
“You’re right. I guess it doesn’t. So now, what did you do? Did you do your big brother’s bidding like a good boy?”
“You don’t have to be snide,” Ann Kingman snapped. “Stop dragging this out. You have something to say, then say it.”
“Did you?” I asked again.
The obstetrician’s voice was barely above a whisper. “No.”
“What happened?”
He looked around at the others in the room, as if one of them might be able to bail him out. But no one could. And he knew it. He let out a difficult sigh.
“The woman changed her mind,” he said. “She wanted to keep the baby. She promised me that she would not bother Richard about it at all. The two of them were finished anyway. She was smart enough to know that. She was … she was a shrewd woman. You didn’t know Richard, Mr. Sewell. My brother thought he was the noblest thing on Earth in even sending these women off to me to ‘help them out.’ As far as he was concerned he owed them nothing.”
“But in this case?”
“She wanted to keep the baby. She made me promise not to tell him.”
“Your little secret, eh? Something you could secretly hold over your brother?” He didn’t respond. “So what happened?”
“She came to term, and she delivered a healthy baby. I delivered it for her.”
Ann Kingman stiffened. This was news to her.
“And you never told your brother?”
“As you said, it was my little secret. My pathetic little secret. For what it was worth. No. I never mentioned it to Richard. Not until last summer.”
“What happened last summer?”
Kingman made a silent appeal to the woman seated next to him, but she was refusing to look at him. Kingman spoke to his hands, “Richard ran into the child’s mother. It was purely by chance. She was sick. She was in the hospital. At Hopkins. She had cancer.”
“And what was the woman’s name, Dr. Kingman.”
He looked over at the woman in the sunglasses. Vickie remained stone still. The obstetrician sighed, then answered.
“Ruth Waggoner.”
I asked, “What did your brother tell you?”
“He told me that he had come across this woman at Hopkins. He saw her name on the door of her room. At first he didn’t go in and see her. But the next day he saw a young woman coming out of her room. It was … it was the young woman who got killed.”
“Helen.”
“Yes. Her.”
“And what happened next?”
“Richard went in and spoke with the woman. With Ruth. He told her who he was. She was terribly ill. He could see that she was dying. He asked her who was the young woman who had just been in her room. She said it was her daughter. Helen. And then she told him … that she was his daughter too.”
Were I to claim that the room fell so silent that we could hear the snow falling outside, I’d be exaggerating. But not by much. Nobody spoke or moved. And then Russell Bennett blurted out, “What the hell are you saying? Richard had an affair with his own daughter? Jesus Christ!”
Bennett’s outburst loosened the room. Joan Bennett turned her back on the rest of us and stared out the window at the snow, one hand half covering her mouth. Ann Kingman’s glower traveled calmly about the room, resting on the man on the couch next to her. Daniel Kingman withered under her glare. It was clear that he had never shared this secret with her. I well imagined that Kingman hadn’t shared it with anyone. I stepped over to Vickie and touched her on the shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, but didn’t dare to speak. I turned back around and addressed Russell Bennett. The look of disgust was still on his face.
“Kingman didn’t have an affair with Helen. That was what everyone assumed, of course, given his history. Your father-in-law was a slummer. According to what the good doctor here told me in his office, Richard Kingman went for women who he felt were well beneath him, who he could easily discard. What his own son referred to as ‘pure trash.’ If he got them into trouble, he sent them off to his brother.”
Ann Kingman muttered something. I missed what it was, but it was obvious from the look on Daniel Kingman’s face that he had heard it. Loud and clear.
I continued, “Something apparently struck a chord though when Richard ran back into Ruth Waggoner last summer. Who knows? Maybe it was actual pity, seeing the horrible way that her life was ending. Maybe the two talked out a lot of things, we’ll never know. One thing does seem certain, it appears that the news that he had a daughter … another daughter … it appears that the news got to him. What was it he said to you about that, Dr. Kingman? Did your brother suddenly get sentimental after all these years? Was he glad to discover that he had a daughter he had never known about?”
The doctor looked up from his balled fist. His mouth opened. But he said nothing. I pressed, “Go on. Tell us. Did Richard rush to you and thank you profusely for what you did? Was he overjoyed that you had tricked him like that? That you had lied to him and then kept it from him all those years that he had another child out there somewhere?”
“Of course not,” Kingman said softly.
“I’ll bet ‘of course not.’ I’ll bet the bastard pitched a bloody fit.”
“Accurate,�
�� was all that the man on the couch could say.
“Okay then. So, did your brother contact Helen?” I asked. “Or did Ruth finally let her daughter in on this piece of information that she’d been holding back all these years?” I stole a glance at Vickie, who was remaining mute and stoic behind her sunglasses.
Kingman shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“Well, whichever it was, they got in contact. However it shook down, the point is that Richard Kingman decided to take care of Helen. He became the ultimate sugar daddy. He bought her new clothes, things for her son, an old MG that she had seen on sale. It’s amazing what guilt will do.” I took a step toward the couch. “Isn’t it, Doctor?”
For a fraction of a second, a look of anger flashed across Daniel Kingman’s face. As quickly as it appeared, it vanished.
“You lied to me in your office yesterday. Richard didn’t pretend to you that he was having an affair with Helen, did he? That’s too perverse, even for Richard. When he brought her in to see you, you knew exactly who she was. You knew this wasn’t his lover he was asking you to take care of. Why did you come up with the story that Richard was planning to run off with this woman? That’s what you told Ann, isn’t it? You pretended with me that you were ‘protecting’ Ann from this horrible truth. But the fact is, you came up with that horrible lie yourself and fed it to her. What I don’t understand is why? What did you possibly think would happen? If Ann were to confront her husband about this ‘affair,’ the truth would surely come out, right? And along with it, so would your part in all of this. I don’t get it.”
All eyes in the room were on Daniel Kingman. Slowly he unballed his fists and looked up, searching for a sympathetic face. He didn’t find any. He settled on me. I was the only one not staring daggers.
“Richard was getting away with it again. Like he always did,” he said calmly. “After all those years of taking care of his ‘problems,’ now he had me hooked up in another one of his secrets. And this one he was actually thrilled about. I can’t explain it, but once he adjusted to the fact, Richard was very happy about this new daughter. That doesn’t mean he thanked me for what I had done. He was angry about that. And somehow … I don’t know. Somehow my taking this girl on as a patient and having to keep this secret for him … It was all just becoming too much for me. I wanted to hurt him.”
“Correction. You wanted Ann to hurt him,” I said. “But why didn’t you just tell Ann the truth about Helen? She would certainly have had plenty to blow up about hearing that her husband has had a love child all the years of the marriage.”
Kingman locked his gaze on me. He didn’t dare let himself look elsewhere. Especially not at the woman seated right next to him. “First she would have blown up at me.”
This time I heard the word that escaped from Ann Kingman. “Pathetic.” Daniel Kingman lowered his head and stared again at his hands. Then he brought them up to his face and began to weep into them. Hands that giveth and hands that taketh away.
Russell Bennett again broke the uncomfortable silence.
“So, come on now, what are you getting at with all of this? Are you saying that Dan killed that girl? That’s completely ridiculous.”
I ignored him and instead addressed Ann, “Are you aware that your husband made some changes in his will several months ago?”
“This is the first I’ve heard about it,” she answered.
“So, the will that your lawyer produced after the funeral … it made no mention of Helen Waggoner?”
“Not a peep.”
“And yet your husband did change his will. I happen to know this for a fact. He had been taking care of Helen and her son. He was planning to move them into a new apartment. He put Helen in the will. Just so that you know, he didn’t alter any provisions concerning you. Those arrangements remained intact. What he did was to slice away a portion from his other children, from Joan and from Jeffrey, so that he could give something to Helen. That’s only equitable, after all.”
“Richard’s will never mentioned that woman,” Ann said again.
“No. I’m sure you’re right. It didn’t. The will that you saw didn’t. It was the one that your husband had drawn up before he even knew that Helen Waggoner existed.”
“Then how—”
“Michael Fenwick,” I said. “I’m sure that your husband gave no indication to Fenwick at the time he requested some changes in his will that he was going to be doing anything drastic. That would be why Fenwick gave it over to Constance Bell to handle. Once he reviewed it, however, and saw that this Helen Waggoner person was cutting into Joan and Jeffrey’s portion of the pie … Well, I guess a sense of loyalty to the family moved in and … How do you want me to put this, clouded his professional judgment.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he put his foot into the shit, Ann. He started a ball rolling that ended up getting Helen Waggoner killed. That’s what I mean.”
“Michael was a good friend of the family,” she said simply, as if that fact alone forgave everything that transpired.
“A good friend of the family. I gather that he was,” I said icily. “Since high school, in fact. Michael Fenwick spent a lot of time in this house when he was a teenager, didn’t he? He and Jeffrey attended St. Paul’s together, am I right?”
Ann waved a hand lazily.
“Then Fenwick went on to the University of Virginia. That is where he went, isn’t it? UVA?”
“Correct.”
“Didn’t one of your children also attend Virginia, Ann?”
“I believe you know the answer to that question already, Mr. Sewell.”
“You’re right. I do. I’m just looking for someone to volunteer a little goddamn information here, Ann. I know it looks like I’m having so much fun, but I’d be just as happy if we could end this.”
“Then end it,” she said curtly.
“Did Jeffrey attend Virginia?” I asked.
From behind me, still facing the window, Joan Bennett spoke up. “You know full well that he didn’t.” She turned to face the room. Her arms were as tightly crossed as if she were wearing a straitjacket. “Jeffrey went to Washington and Lee. I attended UVA.”
“And you went to St. Paul’s too? St. Paul’s for Girls, I mean. That’s the one down the hill from the Boys School, right? You dated Michael Fenwick in high school, didn’t you? His picture even appears on your senior yearbook page.” I hadn’t seen this, but Jay Adams had seen it. He had seen a lot of other things too, during his deskside investigation. “The two of you decided to go to Charlottesville together. If I’m not mistaken, there was even a brief engagement? That one of you then broke off?”
Her head nodded almost imperceptibly.
“You’re the one who got Michael’s firm and your father together, aren’t you, Joan? Constance Bell had that wrong. She told me she thought it had been Jeffrey. But Fenwick was much more your old chum than he was your brother’s. And so, when he got this news about someone named Helen Waggoner nosing her way into your and Jeffrey’s inheritance, he came running to you, didn’t he? Not to Jeffrey. You didn’t know who Helen Waggoner actually was any more than your mother did. I doubt she even shared with you her erroneous information that your father was mixed up with this young woman. Though I’m sure you were able to leap to that conclusion all on your own. I’m guessing you didn’t like it much, yes? This woman coming in and stealing money from you and your children? Then suddenly, your father dies. What exactly happened Joan? Did you simply freak out? Or were you calculating about the whole thing? You got Michael Fenwick to pull the old will, the one that didn’t mention Helen. And then what? Were you worried that whoever this Helen Waggoner was she was going to rise up and make a stink? Expose your father’s extracurricular activities and demand her part of the pie? Was that what you were afraid would happen? I’d love to know just how much of it was you wanting more of your daddy’s money and how much of it was you wanting to protect his reputation. Why don’t you tell all the goo
d people here just which it was?”
“Why don’t you just go to hell?” she said calmly.
“Give me one more minute first. So, how did it work? Did you ask Fenwick outright to find someone who would”—I tipped my head in the direction of the couch—“take care of this little problem for you? Did he agree? I gather he was the type to go the extra mile, so to speak. Was it his idea, Joan, or yours? Did he tell you that he could dig around and come up with someone who would be willing to kill Helen so long as the price was right? And what was the price anyway? I’m dying to know.”
She said nothing. She had her mother’s steely reserve; I could feel it from all the way across the room. I glanced over at Vickie, who stood up from her chair and crossed over to me. I turned away from Joan Bennett and addressed my question to the entire room.
“Let me ask my question again. From earlier. Does anyone in this room want to take responsibility for the death of Helen Waggoner?”
Joan Bennett uncoiled her arms and stepped calmly over to where her husband was sitting. She made a small gesture that her husband read as her wanting a cigarette. He pulled a pack from his jacket pocket and handed one to her, along with a plastic lighter. Joan Bennett looked over at me as she was flicking the lighter.
“Sure. I’ll take it.”
That’s when I gave Vickie the signal to remove her sunglasses. Russell Bennett was the first to see it, or at least he was the first to react. “Oh, my God!” Cool, calm, calculating Joan was a beat behind him. She hadn’t even exhaled the first puff of her cigarette; her jaw literally dropped and the smoke curled over her teeth like dry ice.
“In that case,” I said, taking hold of Vickie, who was shaking now, “you really ought to apologize to your sister.”
A gasp came up from the couch. Ann Kingman.
“Oh, my God in heaven.”
CHAPTER 28
No pun intended, but Billie did a bang-up job with Jeffrey Kingman. Most of the injuries he had sustained from his accident—that’s what it was, an accident—were internal, not counting, of course, the lower abdomen, where the steering column of his car had impaled him as the car tumbled down the icy embankment. His face had been left relatively unmarred, and Billie had been able to fashion it into the peaceful-sleep contour that is so soothing to the bereaved. Jeffrey’s glasses had been snapped in two, a clean break on the bridge that Billie was able to repair with a teardrop of Super Glue. Billie hadn’t had the chance to get around to repairing the eyeglasses until after Vickie and I left to go over to the Kingman house. When Vickie went down to the basement on her own—slipping quietly out of the apartment while Billie was puttering about in the kitchen—Jeffrey Kingman’s glasses (in two pieces) were sitting on a shelf, along with his wristwatch, which had survived the crash and was still ticking. And so Vickie had been able to see, when she pulled the stiff sheet away from Kingman’s face—the little star-shaped dot on the side of his nose, the small, bluish birthmark that was hidden from sight so long as Jeffrey Kingman was wearing his glasses. The small, oval nosepiece of his glasses came down right on top of the nearly insignificant blemish, just as the nosepiece of Sam’s sunglasses came down over the very same blemish on the very same location on the side of Vickie’s nose. That’s what she saw when she went down to the basement. That’s why she screamed.