“Looks to me like you’re about ready to get out of the sun,” Dane Blackmoor said. His face was completely eclipsed by the spots in my eyes.
Focusing, I saw the flaming magenta stripes on my calves and thighs. Not even parallel stripes, I shuddered, one being a frontal line, the other running from ankle to hip. I sat up quickly, pulling the dress down over my knees. The light cotton might have been razor blades and barbed wire. “I’m fine,” I lied.
Blackmoor sat back on his heels. “I brought you something.” He produced what looked to be a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
I opened it, squinting against the sun. It was an old photograph of some people sitting around a restaurant table. To the left, almost out of the range of the lens, was a very young Dane Blackmoor. Next to him sat a beautiful woman. They were the only two who weren’t looking into the camera; and it isolated them in a way, made them seem somehow a world apart from the others.
“Your mother,” Blackmoor said. “I thought you might like—”
But I’d stopped listening. It was as if my mind wasn’t big enough to contain the thought. Dane Blackmoor is my Real Father. He brought me this picture as proof.
“I—I—” The words stuck in my throat.
“Dane!” I looked over Blackmoor’s shoulder at the young woman calling from the boardwalk. “I’m tired! I want to take a shower!”
He didn’t turn. Didn’t even let on that he’d heard. “You can have it,” he said, pushing the photograph back into my hand, “if you want it.”
I watched him as he walked slowly toward his companion. Even at this distance I could see she was beautiful, her yellow hair flying in the wind, the gauze of a white dress whipped like frosting against her lean body. When they were completely out of sight, I turned off the radio and carefully placed the photograph into my tote. Waves of chilly nausea swept through me. The rays seemed to find the burn on my legs even under the cover of my skirt. I moved across the sand, as if in a dream, wondering whether a person could die by fatally mixing a depilatory with too much sun.
It didn’t matter, I decided. Because if I died now, I knew at least one person would mourn me.
I knew that my father would care.
FIVE
There was no hiding my legs from Cilda. She took one look at them, ablaze in all their aching crimson splendor, and her mouth went into action. “What you cooking yourself dark for, girl?”
“I fell asleep,” I said, sitting patiently while the old woman applied clean white dishtowels soaked in aloe. It hurt, but I wouldn’t dare complain.
“’ow is it the only time you pull these things,” Cilda growled, “is when ’imself is coming ’ome?”
“That’s enough,” I told her. “I’m okay.”
“Yes, sure you okay,” said Cilda, “till the sun go down in the sky and up on your t’igh.” I jumped off the kitchen stool, knocking over my tote bag. Its contents spilled in a damning configuration all over the freshly mopped floor.
“Where’d you get that radio?” Cilda barked.
“Pete told me I could borrow it.” I watched Cilda’s round eyes travel from the baby oil to the photograph. I went for it, a beat too late.
“And what’s this?”
I took it from her. “It’s mine,” I said defiantly. “Dane Blackmoor gave it to me.”
Cilda’s big hands clamped over my wrist. “You put that ting away,” she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. “The big man see that, there’s gonna be ’ell to pay.”
Pete poked his head in the back door. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.”
Cilda let go of my arm, smoothing the front of her dress as she crossed to the door. “Put it away,” she said in parting. “Now.”
It was true, I thought, hurriedly stuffing everything back into the canvas bag. There had been something between Blackmoor and my mother, something that would be enough to set Dudley into a rage if he were reminded of it. Even Cilda knew. I pushed through the kitchen doors. Dudley’s entourage stood in the entranceway amid a ton of luggage.
“I don’t care if you have to track him down in the fucking steam-room,” Dudley was telling his assistant, “I want him on the phone now.” The young man walked into the study looking despondent.
“Hi,” I said, holding the tote bag behind me.
“Hello, Garner.” Dudley turned immediately to Cilda. “Did those cases of brandy I ordered arrive?”
“Came this morning,” Cilda told him.
He smiled for the first time. “Good.”
“I wanted to ask you something—” I began. Cilda glowered. “—about what the prosecution said at the trial this week.”
“Not now, Garner. Can’t you see I’m exhausted?” Dudley headed past me, loosening his tie. “Bring me a drink, will you, Cilda, love?”
“But—” I started to follow.
“Really, Garner,” Dudley said, stopping short as he looked down at my legs. For a moment I thought he was going to reprimand me. Instead he just laughed and shook his head.
For the first time in years, it didn’t even hurt so much.
“Don’t bodder ’imself, girl,” Cilda clucked after he shut the door to the study. “The man bone tired, ’e need to relax.” She bustled off to get his drink.
I wondered, not for the first time, how no one else saw it. All of them—Cilda, Pete, everybody—they all thought Dudley Quinn III came home to relax. But I knew better.
I knew he came home to practice.
SIX
I sat on the front porch steps staring at the darkening sky. Behind me, the wooden screen door swung lazily open and shut on its hinges. The air smelled of mosquito spray and the coming storm, a heady aroma that made me almost too lethargic to turn. Still, I knew it was Blackmoor.
“It’s always worse after dark,” he said.
I turned, looking up at him, questioningly.
“Sunburn.” He sat down on the step above me, holding a stemmed glass filled with burgundy-colored liquid. Reflexively, I pulled my skirt over my aching knees. We stayed that way, quietly looking at the sky. Inside, one of Dudley’s houseguests was playing “Eleanor Rigby” on the grand piano. The sounds drifted out and were immediately muffled by the heavy air. They sounded as though they came from a million miles away. From the moon, even.
I stole a glance at Blackmoor’s profile. This wasn’t his good side. I could see the bumps where his nose had been broken. The thought of him hurting, bleeding, made me want to cry. I had the sudden urge to throw my arms around him, to be cradled in his lap, with my head in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck.
He slid down a step, to my level. “You come out here a lot?” I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. What if I made a slip? What if I called him Daddy?
“What do you do?” he asked.
I managed a shrug. “I wait,” I told him.
He laughed. His laughter was never happy. “For the show to start,” he said caustically.
The indoor pianist ended the song abruptly, pounding the keys with his fists as though suddenly bored. Dane offered his wineglass. I glanced toward the door before taking it from him, swallowed a mouthful, and handed it back. That moment, the church word Communion took on an added meaning.
“What do you think about the accused, Lady Mariah?” Blackmoor asked. It was a question I’d heard formed many ways this summer, but it surprised me, coming from him.
“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully.
He feigned shock. “Aren’t you supposed to say she’s innocent as the day is long? I mean, you are the attorney’s kid, aren’t you?”
Was that a trick question? The wine and the sun flushed me from head to toe. I felt confused. It took everything I had to look right into his eyes and say, as evenly as I could, “Actually, I don’t think of Dudley as my father.”
Blackmoor leaned forward in the dusk. “What goes on in that busy head of yours, Garnish?” he whispered.
The screen door opened with a screech
. “What you doing sitting out so late?” Cilda called sternly. “Move your behind before you notting but one big mosquito bite all over.”
Dane stood. “We were on our way in anyway, Mrs. Fields,” he told her. He took the last swig of wine and put out his hand, pulling me up. “Let the games begin?” I shot Cilda a so-there look, and followed him into the house.
I knew he was behind me from the way everyone’s eyes shifted when I entered. The good seats were already taken. Blackmoor put his hand on the nape of my neck and steered me into the center of the room.
A shaft of lightning split the sky. Lights flickered. Heavy sheets of rain slanted in through the windows. The sudden violence of the storm jump-started people into action. Several women shrieked. Geoffrey Nash dashed about, closing the sills, calling, “Cilda! Cilda, darling, come quickly!”
“Mr. Blackmoor really knows how to make an entrance,” Dudley remarked. Everyone laughed. Somebody offered Dane a seat.
“We’re fine.” He motioned me to a spot on the piano bench. It wouldn’t have been my first choice. The baby grand was at the wrong end of the room. We would only be able to see Dudley in quarter-profile, dimly. When his voice dipped, or got pensive or sad, we might not be able to hear him at all.
Why should I care? I reminded myself. My loyalties were shifting, fast.
The blond woman who’d called to Dane earlier on the beach was again trying to get his attention. She’d changed into a canary-yellow mini and swept her straight blond hair into a ponytail. When he ignored her, she plopped down on the floor, stretching out legs that were long, tapered, and chestnut brown like the spindles on the center hall staircase.
I stared at her, mesmerized. For some reason she reminded me of Pete’s cat, Zoey, cleaning herself in the sun, leg hiked over her head, licking her privates. She was that uninhibited. “What’s her name?” I whispered.
“Who?” Blackmoor shrugged. “Oh, Sherrie. Sherrie… Something.”
There was a crack of thunder. Cilda hustled into the room, lighting candles with a kitchen match held unsteadily in her bent black fingers. She was spooked by the storm and the roomful of strangers, any of whom she feared were capable of all sorts of bad magic and treachery. I breathed a sigh of relief when she left. Dudley would begin any minute, and then I’d be safe. Not even Cilda would come looking for me when Dudley took the floor.
Once I overheard a couple of the women guests talking together. “Dinner and drinks are just foreplay to Dudley,” one of them said, and they’d exchanged looks and laughed. Later I looked up foreplay. Erotic stimulation preceding sexual intercourse. Since that time that was how I’d thought of the space of time between dessert and Dulcie Mariah—Dudley’s foreplay. Sex, I decided, must be even better than I’d imagined, if it was half as exciting as his stories about the trial.
This night, though, something was off kilter. It might have been Blackmoor’s presence, or the sudden shift in the weather; or maybe Dudley was growing tired of the same old routine. He seemed edgy, distracted.
Rain hammered against the roof like pennies thrown into a tin box. I caught a glimpse of myself in the windowpane. Hair, Medusa-like, a tangle of unruly curls. Skin overly shiny, as though I’d been dipped in a vat of doughnut glaze. The singed flesh on my legs was making me shiver. When Blackmoor took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders, my insides crumpled like tissue paper.
Here, I thought, was the ultimate proof. To him, I wasn’t invisible.
Geoffrey Nash began steering the conversation toward the trial, his voice straining over the clatter of the rain, but Dudley remained uncharacteristically silent. He sat in his usual chair, quietly nursing a gin and tonic. The pretty girl, Sherrie, flexed her magnificent legs, brushing the great man with the tip of a toe. “Aren’t you going to tell us about Dulcie Mariah?”
I held my breath, surprised when Dudley’s face softened into a smile. “Oh,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug, “surely everyone must be bored with all that by now.” So that was it. He wanted to be egged on. His guests obliged, coaxing, cajoling, pleading, until he held up his hands, his face beaming, in his element now.
That was when Blackmoor took his first shot. “Yes, Quinn,” he said. “Tell us. How’s the murderous little wench doing?”
I gripped the edge of the piano bench, feeling as though I might fall off. A sputter of nervous laughter went around the room. All eyes were pinned on Dudley, trying to gauge his response. He leaned back in his chair, ice chinking to the other side of his glass.
When he spoke, his tone was friendly. “Well, Mr. Blackmoor, you know where I stand in the matter. If you have a contrasting viewpoint”—Dudley tipped his glass in a mock salute—“by all means, feel free. I’m certain your opinion, however uninformed, will be far more interesting than the prosecutor’s has been thus far.” Congratulatory laughter all around.
I wanted it to end there. Knew that it wouldn’t. Dudley crossed to the bar, talking over his shoulder as he took the cap off the gin. “Actually, I’d love to hear what you have to say. You know the lady in question, don’t you?”
Blackmoor’s lips twisted up at the edges. “I knew her.” Something about his inflection made it clear the conversation had taken a biblical turn. I watched Dudley pour, put the liquor bottle down—plop, plop, thud. Not happy sounds.
He turned, the very essence of charm—“Why do I get the feeling I shouldn’t call upon you as a character witness?”—defusing the tension in the room, allowing everyone to breathe again. Sherrie Something picked up a cocktail napkin and began fanning her face with it. Two of the regulars—a country-and-western singer and a quarterback wearing a gaudy Super Bowl ring—stumbled over themselves trying to see who could open a window for her first.
Just when it appeared the room had quieted down, Geoff Nash turned to Blackmoor and said, offhandedly, “I’m just curious, Dane. You don’t really believe she’s guilty?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I do.”
Everyone began talking at once. “No, no, I want to hear this,” Dudley said over the objections. He turned his chair around, straddling it. “Is your opinion based on fact, Mr. Blackmoor—or do you simply not like the lady’s looks?”
“Oh, I’ve always liked her looks,” Blackmoor said. They eyed each other intently, as if the conversation were continuing, telepathically. I felt too close to the center of things, marooned on a piano bench with the object of Dudley’s scrutiny. I’m a speck of dust, I incanted, silently, too small and insignificant for anyone to see. The mantra seemed to work because instead of lighting on me, Dudley’s gaze turned to the others.
“Well, sir,” he boomed, in his best courtroom voice, “why don’t you tell us your version of what happened?”
“Versions are your business, not mine,” Blackmoor responded quietly. “I thought we were talking about guilt.” He sat very straight beside me, perfectly articulating his words. I suddenly realized Dane Blackmoor was drunk.
“Guilt,” Dudley repeated, as though considering the concept for the first time. He gestured to Geoffrey Nash. “Hand me that file on the desk there, would you, Geoff?” Nash picked up a manila folder. “On second thought,” Dudley told him, “pass it to our guest, why don’t you?”
Geoffrey handed the folder to Blackmoor. I watched as he slid out the contents: four 8x10 glossies showing Dulcie Mariah’s son, Charlie, lying on the floor of a closet, with half his head missing. The close-ups weren’t as bad as the long shots. In the long shots you could tell just how small he was. Blackmoor studied each photograph for a moment before stuffing them all back into the envelope. I couldn’t see his face.
“Was the woman you knew”—Dudley blew out the word like a poison dart—“capable of that?”
A sudden bolt of lightning lit up the room, turning it surrealistically white. Then everything went black. “I tell you, don’t mess with Mariah,” Geoffrey piped up. The others laughed.
“Sorry, ladies and gents,” Dudley apologized, setting a flickerin
g candelabrum onto the coffee table. “Must’ve struck a power line.”
Blackmoor’s Sherrie sat back on her haunches. “Oh, Mr. Quinn, can’t we keep going anyway? It’ll be like telling ghost stories in summer camp.”
“I always make a point of obliging lovely ladies,” Dudley said, “but I must remind you. This isn’t a campfire tale. It’s something my client will have to live with, daily, for the rest of her life. The memory of that precious little boy, her only child…gone. Taken from her forever, in such a horrible, horrible way.”
His eyes brimmed, accentuated by the glow of the candle light. He blinked twice, shook his head as though embarrassed by his own weakness, focusing his pent-up suffering on a bead of sweat that wended a liquid path down his gin glass. I counted in my head—one–one thousand…two–one thousand…three–one thousand—waiting for the smile. Wistful. Brave. Juries ate this stuff up.
It was only gradually that he appeared to remember the rest of us. “I’m sorry…those pictures,” he sighed, setting his shoulders square. I feared for Dane. I knew now Dudley would move in for the kill.
His voice reflected the change. “You were about to tell us why you think she’s guilty, Mr. Blackmoor?”
“Forget it.”
“No, really”—expansively, on the offensive now—“I’d like to know. There were over a hundred people at the party that night—not to mention the nanny, the caterers, the housekeeping staff. Several of the guests had a history of violence. Many were drug addicts.” He turned to the others, anticipating their thoughts. “Granted it wasn’t the smartest thing, inviting these fringe characters into her home, with her little boy there, but that’s the music business for you, that’s rock ’n’ roll.” Although he didn’t say the words, they were plain in everyone’s mind—hey, she might not be the mother of the year, but it doesn’t make her a murderer.
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