“He wouldn’t—he couldn’t—be so stupid.”
“The truth is,” Riva said slowly, “he could. He killed a woman before. Why shouldn’t he do it again?”
“What, in heaven’s name, are you talking about?”
Riva turned away, moving to the bed where she sat on the end. “It was something he said last night, something about that woman civil rights worker who was killed that summer years ago. Do you remember? She was driving a truck and was shot by a boy behind the wheel of a carload of redneck rowdies out joyriding. I saw that car later, Margaret, saw it going down behind the house toward the pond.”
Her sister sat up straight, a frown between her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“I think Edison was driving that car. I think he killed that woman. He as good as told me so last night. What’s more, I think that’s why he brought me to New Orleans so that anything I said against him would sound like petty vengefulness for the way he had tricked me.”
“What about now? What’s it going to sound like if you drag up such ancient history?”
“Who cares what it sounds like? He killed a woman, Margaret! And think of what he did to Beth. On top of that, he not only tried to have me killed, but I told you how he attacked me again last night. He might even have murdered me with his own hands when he had finished with me. I have the means to stop him. If I don’t do it, I will be responsible for whatever he may do from now on. I couldn’t live with that.”
“Can you live without friends? Can you live with disgrace? Think, Riva!”
“I’ll have to do the best I can. But I’m not asking your advice, Margaret. I’m telling you what I intend to do so you can decide how you are going to handle the consequences.”
“What about Erin?”
“I’ll tell her, too. It wouldn’t be fair to let her learn by hearing it blurted out in front of a television camera.”
“Oh, Riva, why not leave it at that, just telling Erin? You’ll have what you wanted when you started. Erin will know Josh is her half-brother, and that will put an end to anything between them. She’ll know I’m not her mother, but the whole world won’t have to know.” Margaret fumbled for a tissue, using it to dab at her eyes.
Riva gave a slow shake of her head. “It isn’t enough. Think what it would be like to have a man like Edison in power. There’s no telling what he might do, who he might hurt.”
“I thought he was in the hospital. Won’t it seem a little malicious to bring public charges against a man lying in the hospital and whose son is at death’s door?”
“I checked this morning when I called about Josh. They only kept Edison overnight. I agree the timing is bad, since Josh’s condition is still uncertain, but what can I do?”
“There must be something!” Margaret declared, her voice shrill. “There must be!”
“If there was, I would do it, I promise. There is nothing.”
Her sister stared at her with eyes of stone. She wiped her face once more, then, letting her hand holding the crumpled tissue fall to her side, she turned her head away.
Riva did not speak to Erin immediately. She had already left the house for the hospital. Riva thought of getting dressed and going herself, but that would be asking for trouble. There was no point in going to work; she could not concentrate enough to be of any use. Anyway, Noel had gone. He would take care of whatever came up; that was one thing she did not have to worry about.
She still dreaded the talk with Erin and wished she could get it over with, but in an odd sort of way, she felt good. There was in the back of her mind the growing euphoria of impending relief. She had kept her past hidden for so many years, lived with the constant fear of discovery for so long, that she hadn’t realized what a weight it had become.
She was tired of secrets. They were dangerous things. They festered like a thorn under the skin, poisoning the blood. The body might absorb the thorn’s infection, might grow a tough core around it, but you never knew when it would flare up again. The only thing to be done was to cut it out and be rid of it. The operation might be painful, might even leave a scar, but it would be for the best.
The morning was long, but finally it was lunchtime. Then the afternoon gathered a momentum of its own, spinning by so quickly that Riva could not think where it went. It was dusk when Erin returned. She was not alone; Doug Gorsline was with her. The two of them came out to where Riva sat on the back gallery. Josh was the same, Erin said, though Anne Gallant was hopeful he would be all right. But what was this about a press conference? Doug had told her there was to be one but was being mysterious about the purpose of it. What in the world was going on?
Riva had thought she was ready. She had made tentative plans for the gradual way she would lead up to the subject of Erin’s birth. Now they flew to the four winds, and she could think of nothing to say. She wasn’t ready at all.
“Aunt Riva? What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
She smiled with a tremulous movement of her lips. “Only everything,” she said.
Somehow she told it, about the summer of ‘63 and how she had come to marry, or think she had married, Edison, and of how he had left her in New Orleans. She told of her days in the restaurant kitchen with Dante and the birth of her child and how Margaret had claimed her; of her rescue from the Bourbon Street bar by Cosmo and the nature of her marriage to him, including a carefully censored version of her affair with Noel. Cosmo’s death, Erin remembered, as well as the day at the rally. And she was intelligent, Riva’s own daughter; therefore, she began to guess at what was left unsaid, to leap ahead with questions and answers, though her face was white and stunned and her voice a whisper in her throat.
At last Erin said, “How can it be? How can Josh’s father be the monster you claim when Josh is so—so kind, so sweet?”
“I can’t explain it, except to say that heredity is a strange thing, and he is also his mother’s son.”
“And my brother, my half-brother. I can’t believe it.” Erin stared down at her fingers, which were twisted together in her lap as she sat in a wrought-iron chair. Doug, standing behind her, put his hand on her shoulder and pressed it firmly.
“Nor can I believe it, sometimes,” Riva answered.
The younger woman gave a soft laugh. “I used to wish that you were my mother. I felt guilty about it, but I did. Part of it was the money; I thought you would buy me anything I wanted and I would never have to hear that you couldn’t afford it. But another part was that I wanted to be like you, always poised and gorgeous, always knowing the right thing to do, the right thing to say, always your own woman. Now I’m not so sure.”
Riva felt a tightness close around her heart. “Why is that?”
“I’m not sure I would ever want to do something like this business with the press conference to somebody.”
“I’m not doing it out of revenge,” Riva protested.
“Aren’t you? If what Edison Gallant has done is so bad, why not go to the police?”
“There’s no real proof, nothing except my word.”
“Then how can you be sure?”
“I know.”
“Do you? Are you certain it’s not because of what he did to you all those years ago?”
“Erin, please! I’m not a vicious woman. I wouldn’t do it without just cause.”
“So you say, but do you really know why you’re doing it? Is there no alternative except to hold Josh’s father up to public scorn? What if you’re wrong? It can never be undone. You will have ruined a brilliant political career all because of a mistake made years ago.”
Riva shook her head. “It may have been made years ago, but it was compounded in this past week. Don’t you understand? I know you feel you should be loyal to Edison, and I’m well aware of how persuasive and personable he can be when he chooses, but don’t let it blind you to what he is. This man you persist in looking up to as some kind of political genius forced himself on your aunt and tried to force himself on me. I can’t prove h
e killed that woman years ago or that he tried to have me killed, but the first two things cannot be denied.”
“It can’t be denied that someone tried to kill him, too. Maybe it was the same person who tried to have you killed. Have you thought of that? Maybe you’re both victims!”
“It won’t work, I tell you—”
Erin jumped to her feet. Her nose was red and there were tears standing in her eyes. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it. I can’t stand to hear any more.”
Riva rose also. “I know it’s a lot to take in, and I’m sorry I had to unload it on you all at once. Let’s have something to drink and just talk quietly—”
“I’ve had enough talk for one day.” Erin turned to the young man behind her. “Doug, could you take me somewhere, anywhere?”
“Wait,” Riva said, putting her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Don’t go off like this while you’re upset. I won’t say another word.”
But Erin only pulled free and half walked, half ran from the gallery. Doug, with a quick glance that might have been of apology or censure or both, went after her. In a few minutes there came the sound of his car as it roared into life and rumbled away down the drive.
Riva went to her room and stayed there. Abraham brought her a tray at dinnertime, but she could not eat. A while later, there came a quiet knock and Noel called to her. She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. She sat in a chair in the dark, staring at nothing.
What was she doing? Was it the right thing or was she committing a crime more brutal than anything Edison had ever thought of doing? Was she destroying a man for her own ends or balancing an uneven scale of justice? And even if it was the last, who was she to play God?
But this was the way it was done these days, wasn’t it? This was the equivalent of the public pillory, this trumpeting of a man’s sins in the public press. It had to be this way or else the private sins of the great and near great would never be known. It was too easy for such people to manipulate facts and laws and to turn all that pertained to them from sins of black and white to shades of gray. Therefore, this public disgrace was necessary to make the glare of light too bright for them to hide.
But was it right? Was it fair? Did the rules apply when the deeds done went past mere indiscretions, illustrated more than character flaws?
Justice or revenge? Which was she after? Did she really know herself? Where did one end and the other begin?
Maybe Margaret was right, maybe she had done enough by telling Erin and ending the possibility of a relationship between her daughter and Josh. Maybe she should play it safe and hope that Edison would do the same. Surely he would not dare to go farther with his threats now that so many knew what he was and what he had done?
Safety. Was there ever such a thing?
***
Morning came with a flush of light beyond the lace curtains. Riva rose from her chair and took off the clothes she had worn the day before. She showered and changed into a dress of soft turquoise silk, then did her makeup and put on her pearls, the Staulet pearls that made her look classically elegant, indisputably well dressed. Her appearance gave her confidence. She needed it.
She was having coffee—all she could stand for breakfast—when she heard the first car on the drive. She knew this thing she had set in motion had really begun when she looked through the windows to see men in shorts and T-shirts dragging out the cameras and sound equipment, saw the men and women in tailored clothes standing before the house and beginning to speak into microphones.
By nine-thirty, a half hour before the conference was to start, the driveway was full of cars and the lawn under the trees was a mass of wires and black boxes and silver camera cases. The noise was incredible. To maintain some kind of order, Abraham was serving coffee and hot biscuits on the gallery. Erin had gone out to help with the coffee, passing out napkins and bringing fresh cups from the kitchen. Margaret was still keeping to her room, almost in hiding, while Constance was secluded with her children to prevent their exposure to the press. Boots and George were directing traffic and shouting themselves hoarse to keep people away from the flower beds and out of the precious branches of the famous trees. Noel, it appeared, was stationed in the hall to keep everyone out of the house until the time came. He would let them in a few at a time at nine-forty-five, but not a second before. He didn’t want them overrunning the place, poking in where they did not belong.
Riva was ready, or hoped she was. Her stomach cramped with nerves, and her throat was so dry she was sure she could not speak. Words jostled in her head as she tried without success to think of exactly what she was going to say. The opening line would not come. If she could only think of how she was to begin, then the rest would be easy, she would know how to go on. As it was, she wasn’t sure. She still wasn’t sure.
Abraham left the front gallery long enough to bring her more coffee and try to press a biscuit on her. Some of the press, he said, had got hold of a rumor, come somehow through the mafia families, that she had some dirt on the gubernatorial candidate Gallant. They wanted to know if it was true. What was he to tell them?
“Tell them nothing,” she said, and he nodded wisely and went away to do just that.
At twenty minutes before the hour, Riva left her room and walked down the hall. Her face was composed and her breathing even. She walked with slow, steady steps and tried not to think about what she was doing or why.
She had reached the bottom step of the stairs when the back door opened and a man stepped through into the hall. He looked up in time to see her standing with her hand on the newel post. He smiled without humor.
“Surprise,” he said, his voice low but savage with satisfaction.
It was Edison.
TWENTY-THREE
RIVA STOOD ABSOLUTELY STILL. Her voice was compressed as she said, “What are you doing here?”
“What, isn’t it a party?” he mocked. “Don’t tell me I’m not invited? Here I was thinking I was the guest of honor.”
“How did you—” she began, then stopped as he interrupted.
“Connections, baby. What would a politician be without connections?”
“Mafia,” she said in scorn.
“Let’s just say friends in interesting places, if not high ones.”
At the other end of the long hall, the front door opened at that moment. Noel stepped inside, then checked when he saw Riva with Edison. The pause was fractional, then he closed the door behind him and started toward where they stood. He moved with swift and sure purpose.
“Enough chitchat,” Edison said, speaking fast and low as he watched Noel’s approach. “We have to talk, Riva, you and I. There’s a thing or two you don’t know.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“That may be, but I have a hell of a lot to say to you. If you’re smart, and if you give a damn about our dear little Erin, you’ll listen.”
“What about Erin? Where is my daughter?”
There was fear, sudden and sharp, in Riva’s voice. Edison was not acting like a man who had come to witness his own destruction. He obviously thought he had something he could use to stop her. What else could it be except Erin?
He gave her a tight grin. “Oh, don’t get in a sweat; our daughter’s outside. But I think we should go somewhere and talk about her—and about her future. Now!”
Noel was upon them. His features were grim as he spoke. “Is there something I can do for you, Gallant?”
“I don’t think so, Staulet. Riva here is going to do it. Aren’t you, darling?”
She clenched her teeth at the sound of the endearment. To be forced to agree with it ringing in her ears was galling almost beyond endurance. “Give us a few minutes. Please, Noel.”
The look he turned on her held equal parts of derision and disbelief. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You don’t have long before that horde out there breaks the door down.”
“Yes, I know. Please?”
There was stiff reluctance in
his movements when he turned. His last words were not for her but for Edison. “Five minutes,” he said. “No more.”
Riva moved around the staircase and led the way into the dining room. The morning sun streamed through the windows, gleaming on the long, polished table, shimmering in the antique Baccarat crystal chandelier overhead. She stepped into a pool of light that brought out the muted tints of the old Brussels carpet on the floor before she turned and faced Edison.
“What is it?”
He wasted no more time than she. “Do this, and I’ll drag you down with me.”
A soft sound left her that was not far from a laugh. “I never thought otherwise.”
“Oh, I don’t mean a little gossip, a little tarnish on your image as the lady of the manor. I mean I will put you back out in the street, dancing naked on tables and maybe trying to sell a piece now and then to pay the rent. You’re a bit old for it, but you’ll get by.”
“You have to be insulting as well as melodramatic, don’t you? I warn you, I’m not impressed.”
His voice lowered to a sound of pure menace. “Don’t warn me, Riva, I don’t like it. And I don’t like threats like this half-assed press conference. Now, you’re going to walk out there and tell all the damned media you made a mistake, or I’ll have your ass for breakfast.”
“I don’t like threats, either, Edison. Unless you tell me in the next five seconds what you meant by bringing Erin into this, I’m going on exactly as planned.”
“Open your mouth about me, you bitch, and I’ll tell the world you’re not Riva Staulet and never were. You’re Rebecca Benson Gallant. You’re my wife! How do you like that?”
In the abrupt quiet, the clamor outside the house seemed suddenly louder. Riva swallowed hard. “What?”
“That’s right. My wife! That means anything you say out there is going to sound like a messy domestic squabble. It’ll hurt me, sure, but it will put you back where you started twenty-five years ago.”
Crimes of Passion Page 142