by Bill Rowe
“When you hear what I have to say, you will understand that I would be crazy to bug the place. I’ll put the kettle on and then we’ll talk. We can have our tea when we’re finished… if you still want it then, which I doubt.”
“What are you talking like that for, Rosie? We only want fair play. We think you and your lawyer friend here took us for a ride.”
“Hold that thought,” said Rosie and went out to the kitchen.
While she was gone, one of them said to me, “I hope you can make her see some sense here and what’s in everybody’s best interest. She seems to be stressed out by Dad’s cancer.”
I said, “Shut the fuck up until Rosie gets back. She’s the interested party here. And I have no interest in small talk with you two.” I looked up at a corner of the ceiling as one of them stirred aggressively, and continued, “The images from the video cameras have remote, off-site backup.” The other rested a hand on his arm.
Rosie glided back in looking like a flower. “All right,” she said. “You were just complaining that you were hoist with your own petard.”
“What? Hoist what?”
“You were bitching that you were blown up by your own bomb. You were bellyaching that the murder of your own grandfather you committed to get some quick money blew up in your own faces and you ended up screwed.”
“This guy screwed us. He sweet-talked us into doing it. And we want it straightened out.”
“All this guy did,” said Rosie, “was follow the written instructions of your father to give you information so that you could plan your lives. It was your father and I who screwed you. He and I, especially I, planned it all. I got your dad to agree with it. We knew you would be greedy enough to fall for it. And you did—hook, line, and sinker. Nobody can be conned if they’re not greedy. Now, what’s your problem with what happened again?”
“Rosie, we just want the money we would have had if you didn’t trick us. Then we will leave you in peace. We might even give you a couple of million more if you co-operate.”
“If not?”
“If not, we will off you and this guy. And you know we will do it. I don’t care what you told the police here. We will keep an eye on you and follow you wherever you go outside of here, and when it’s right for us, we will kill you. That is a promise. You can enter that in your Blackberry scheduler. Even if you never leave here for the rest of your lives, we will find a way to do it here. We met some coke dealers here the last time who would kill their own grandmother for a grand.”
“Duke, is it? Or Neal, or whoever, let me tell you something about me,” said Rosie. “I kill people too. I don’t threaten them and then do it. I just do it to get revenge or get rid of a threat. This guy here and I killed a brilliant doctor when we were sixteen years old. We clobbered him over the head with a steel pipe and we pushed him and his car over a cliff. We set it up so that it was ruled a mishap, for God’s sake.”
“What’d you do that for?”
“Revenge for making my little sister commit suicide because he had sexually exploited her. And I can tell you, he was a lot smarter than you guys. But I can kill stupid guys, too. I killed a guy, before I was twenty, who threatened to get in my way. Tom will remember Cory the Moose. A big strapping professional hockey player, a friend of your father’s, who was planning to beat up Tom here, or worse, when he got back from his studies in England. His death was ruled acute alcohol poisoning and hypothermia, death from exposure.”
Hearing that, I took my eyes off Rosie and studied my shoes.
“Then I took a little break because no one was bugging me too much until your rotten old grandfather became a fly in my ointment. Then I arranged things so that you two patsies would kill him, which you did right on cue, and it was ruled death by natural causes. I’m used to killing people in the proper way and getting off with it, smart people as well as stupid, so killing you two assholes will be a breeze. Especially with fourteen million dollars to work with.”
Honest to Christ, she was so good, I was starting to get turned on.
“We’re not listening to any more of your bullshit,” said one of them. “We did that once before. So now it’s a question of who kills who first, unless we get our money.”
“Just one little difference in our two situations,” said Rosie. “Tom, do you figure we got all that?”
“Let’s see,” I said. I went into the next room and turned on a switch, went to the beginning of the recording, and played it. Our words came out of a speaker in the bookcase in the living room. “Yup, loud and clear—all with off-site backup too.”
Rosie said, “Your grandfather never had any friends, but even so, he never, ever felt lonely. How come? Because if you’re paranoid, you never feel lonely. You always think someone is nearby trying to get you. That was good old Granddad to a tee. Hence his cameras and mikes.”
“You lying bastards,” said one of the boys. “You said you didn’t have the place—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” said the other, and turned to Rosie. “That recording is no good to you. It’s got you implicated in everything too.”
“Yeah, but if it ever has to be used, we’d already be dead, see, Einstein?” said Rosie. “The recording will be in place for the police to find if anything ever happens to us. On the other hand, if you two turn up dead, there’ll be nothing to implicate us. We’ll destroy it all.”
“More bullshit.” But the protests and bluster were getting weaker.
“And when the police were questioning us about your grandfather’s death, we told them that Tom here informed you two a couple of hours before your grandfather ‘died’”—Rosie made scare quotes with her fingers— “all about the money you would get in your grandfather’s will. Don’t be surprised if you’re detained by the police here for some serious questioning. You know something, boys, and this is your loving stepmother speaking, I’d get the hell out of here today if I were you and never come back.”
“What are you talking about? We have to stay for Dad’s funeral—and what about the reading of his will?”
“You’re about as interested in your dad’s funeral as I would be in yours. And as for his will, I have to tell you that I talked him out of leaving anything to you. You’d probably use any money to put me in harm’s way, I told him. So whatever he was planning to leave to you, he left to me instead—a couple of million each, I believe it was, Tom?”
“Two and a half million each, actually,” I said.
“Jesus Christ, Rosie. That’s going too far. You can push someone over the edge, you know, and they might do something desperate even if it’s not in their own best interest.”
“Like that’d be something new with you guys.”
“We’re done here,” said one, as if he were a lawyer for the villain in a TV whodunit.
“Don’t forget your tea. The kettle is out there whistling Dixie too.”
“Let’s go,” said the other. And not to be outdone by his brother’s TV dramatics, he growled with great emphasis, “Now!”
“Before you go, boys, can I make a deal with you?”
“We’ll listen. Who was it said he’d make a deal with the devil to beat Hitler? Napoleon, Nixon, Socrates, someone from the olden days said it.”
“I’m glad you have developed a great interest in history. Because that’s part of my deal, getting you fellows involved in the better things in life. If you two keep your noses clean and get yourselves trained and into half-decent jobs, I’ll give you each another million dollars in two years. And after that, we’ll see. There could be more.”
“Extortion? I thought little miss goody two-shoes was beyond all that.”
“Beyond giving my stepsons money to help them lead the sensible, civilized life they should be leading, anyway? Yeah, that’s awful.”
“Come on, Rosie. What would you do that for? What’s in it for you? You figure you can buy us off and keep us from killing you?”
“Keep you from doing something equally stupid and endi
ng up in the slammer for life, yes. I do feel somewhat responsible for you. I loved your father, and you are your father’s sons. If your father had not left your mother when you were young, maybe you would have turned out better. It wasn’t my fault he left her—I never encouraged him in the least—but he told me he did it because he wanted me. And because of me, your own mother would not let him have any kind of a normal relationship with you. If you’d had him around as an example to follow, maybe you would have developed some character and some common sense. I may be wrong on that—I kind of believe I am—I’m inclined to think you are probably two dyed-in-the-wool, bred-in-the-bone criminal oafs, and fated to be so forever. But I am willing to give you a second chance for Brent’s sake and for your poor mother’s sake, if you want to take it. It’s entirely up to you.”
“Oh, it’s up to us now, is it? That’s very nice of you. Well, here’s my decision. Fuck you, you gold-digging whore. Come on, Neal.”
I jumped in on cue. “Just before you go, boys, I’m going to give you a way to get off the hook with the police here. I take it you haven’t talked to them yet.”
“No, they called our lawyer in Nevada, but he advised us not to talk to them. He even advised us not to come here. But we came anyway. That’s how fucking pissed we are.”
“You should have followed his advice. But let’s try to make the best of it now that you are here. When the police ask you questions, tell them you knew of your own father’s terminal illness before Gramps died and that you knew what was in Gramps’s will. In other words, you knew that if your grandfather outlived your father, you would get it all, not just a couple of million. That removes all motive for killing your grandfather. Their entire case collapses. I’ll be telling them the same thing, by the way, and that I was present when your father told you he was dying fast, before your visit to the nursing home.”
As the boys cogitated, I saw the little smile on Rosie’s lips. This simple and brilliant little plan was hers. I’d been so preoccupied with my own anxieties, I hadn’t even thought about it.
Duke now leapt to his feet and reacted to it. “You slimy, weaselly cocksucker,” he said to me. “Fuck you too, and fuck the whore you rode in on.” He gestured at Rosie.
“Wait now, Duke,” said his brother. “What’s the good of that? Let’s think it over.”
“Okay, you move over with them, you backstabbing wuss. I’ll just make sure that you’re in the car with them when the bomb goes off.” Duke strode out of the living room and out the door.
“Aw, Jesus, Duke. Don’t get like that.” Neal ran out the door after his brother.
Rosie and I sat there looking at each other. Then she shook her head slowly and laughed a little at the absurdity of it. I said, “What now, you figure?”
“They are likely to do anything. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of them. They are silly enough to think about abducting me and beating the money out of me, or something. We need to keep our guard up. But I’m hoping they’ll come to their senses, especially when they get a visit from the police tonight.”
“Rosie, I assume you were exaggerating about being responsible for Moose Mercer’s death.”
“No I wasn’t. After you broke up with me, Brent tried to ask me out a couple of times, and when Moose found out, I heard him slandering me to him again, drunk, as he’d done to you. And I recalled that he was responsible for the separation between you and me that led to our breaking up. And I said to myself, ‘Why am I putting up with that vicious idiot?’ So I lured him downtown late at night in my car, with a bottle of vodka and dirty promises, got him drunker than usual, and left him to freeze to death behind a building. He was unconscious, didn’t feel a thing, I’m sure. Still, I felt really bad about it, but it turned out to be worth it, because as soon as you heard he was dead you called me up for the first time in months, trying to worm your way back.”
“And you thought I’d suddenly regained enough guts, with him dead, to come back. Well, why wouldn’t you? I’m lucky just to be alive, by the sounds of things.”
“You’re still alive, sweetheart, only because I didn’t want to wail and bawl like my mother at the funeral home that everyone I loved was dead.”
AFTER THE VISITATION AT the funeral home that evening, I drove Rosie home. The boys had not been seen since this afternoon. They worried me. I asked Rosie if she would like me to spend the night there. I’d act as security downstairs on the sofa, I said. She replied that we should go in and have a drink and think that over. She certainly would like me to stay, but it might look like too cozy a relationship this early to anyone looking on. We’d see.
Inside, the phone was ringing. It was the boys. Rosie asked me aloud into her receiver to take the other extension. They had to see us immediately. Could they come over? Rosie looked at me and I nodded.
In minutes they were here. Rosie and I kept them outside on the veranda with all the lights on full and cars going by, including a police car. The cops had been waiting for them in the hotel lobby, they said, and asked them to go to the police station to answer a few questions. They were persons of interest in the death of old Mr. Anstey. They had been there up until half an hour ago, getting a royal drilling.
“Jesus,” said Duke, “those guys are pretty hard-nosed for a police force out here in the boonies. That time we were detained overnight by the LAPD when that Vietnamese pusher turned up dead wasn’t as bad as that.”
Rosie said, “That LA caper might have been worse for you if your dad and I hadn’t signed a bail bond for you and got you out and fixed you up with a lawyer.”
“No, Granddad did all that.”
“Afterwards he replaced us, yes, but we were there in the first instance. Jesus Christ, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that. Here I’ve been racking my brains to figure out why you two hate me so much, and now it’s all clear. You don’t even remember when I was there getting your father to save your sorry asses.”
“God, Rosie, we were only fourteen or fifteen. What do you expect?”
“I was foolish enough to expect a little gratitude at the time. But I’ve learned better since. Now I expect nothing. What do you want? Why are you here? Our champagne is in there getting warm.”
“Those cops really figured we were in on Granddad’s death. They said we had the motive and the opportunity. They knew all about the threats from the loan sharks back home and everything. Who do you figure might have tipped them off to all that?”
“Don’t play dumb, Duke. You know who it was. It was me. When they came around here asking questions, I told them that if there was question of homicide here, their best bet was to look at you two. I told them about the money you owed to the mafia, and I guess they put two and two together.”
“Pardon me for not being as smart as you, Rosie, but if we got nailed, wouldn’t that implicate you the way everything turned out, and your lawyer friend who put us up to it?”
“How would it implicate me? I hadn’t seen you or spoken to you since you were teens. Look, I’ve got to go in before the fizz goes out of my champagne completely.”
I jumped in. “Didn’t you tell them you knew all about the great likelihood that your father would die before your grandfather and you’d get everything?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“The cop looked like he was hit across the head with a baseball bat. But they kind of kept going with the grilling. I think they were putting up a front.”
“I’ll confirm that you knew of your father’s imminent death when I talk to them again. And your father told Rosie he’d told you, too. That should finish it.”
“Rosie, what do you think we should we do? Can your lawyer friend here give us some advice?”
“What you should do,” I said, “is run, not walk, to the airport, get aboard a plane, and fly out of here. Go back home and stay there.”
“But they told us to keep ourselves available for further questioning after the funeral.”
“They have no
thing on you now. They don’t have the evidence to arrest you on, at least not yet. God knows what the forensic guys will turn up when the tests on the pillow get back from the lab to muddy the waters. Go.”
“Rosie, does that deal you offered earlier still stand?”
“Yes, but remember, I’ll be keeping an eye on you to see if you deserve the money or not. If you are reasonably sensible and responsible, you will get it.”
“Okay, we’re out of here. We’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll be on the edge of my chair waiting for your call.”
Rosie watched them leave and then said, “That might turn out okay, but I’m not betting on it. Let’s have that drink, and then you should go home to your own bed. We have just tomorrow at the funeral home and the funeral itself and then clewing up Brent’s estate, and we’re home free. That’s what I’ll be on the edge of my chair waiting for.”
BRENT’S WILL LEFT ALL the money he got from his father and the big house to Rosie, except for a million dollars, which, at Rosie’s suggestion, he left to Suzy. The boys got nothing. There was bluster from Nevada. Their lawyer in Las Vegas telephoned me to negotiate “off the record and without prejudice” a possible settlement. Nothing said between us today could be used in court. He suggested that Rosie had unduly influenced their sick father and that I had been in a serious conflict between my personal interests and my professional advice. He had advised the lads to contest the will, he said, unless a reasonable settlement could be arrived at. I replied that their concerned and solicitous stepmother had already made a more than reasonable offer to them, far greater than they deserved, based on their future good conduct as desired by both their father and grandfather, and there the matter ended. Their lawyer said that the amounts offered and the conditions were not appropriate. The boys had serious cocaine addictions that made them irresponsible and sometimes uncontrollably violent, and they needed more funds from their father’s ample estate for medical help and therapy to cure themselves. So sue, I said, and we’d see if the judge considered that last statement I’d just recorded to be a description of the boys’ condition or an extortion attempt by them and their lawyer backed by threats of violence. “That was without prejudice and off the record,” he howled.