“What?” As the word exploded from his mouth, amazement transformed his face.
He hadn’t known. At the realization, Joni’s stomach tightened. How was this possible? What on earth was going on?
And what sort of Pandora’s box had she just opened?
Chapter Eight
“You do remember donating sperm, don’t you?” Joni’s words echoed in Dirk’s ears.
He felt as if he’d stepped into an alternate reality. Could Jeff be his son after all? “Yes, but Lowell said it wasn’t needed.”
Behind them, a car honked. He tapped the gas and turned onto San Bernardo Road.
Joni clasped her hands so tightly the knuckles whitened. “He told you Jeff was his?”
“It isn’t true?”
“I can’t believe—”
“I had no idea—”
They both stopped. After a moment, Joni said, “There’s no question about it. Once the doctors found he was sterile, Lowell never darkened their doors again. I went by myself for the inseminations.”
“They couldn’t have found some way to use his sperm?”
“He never provided any more,” she said. “It was as if he wanted to put the whole thing out of his head.”
“Jeff’s my son,” he said wonderingly.
“It never occurred to me that Lowell would lie to you,” she admitted.
Dirk drove in silence as he tried to absorb this startling news. Finally, he said, “Do you think Lowell...that he held it against Jeff?”
Joni picked a loose strip of blush-colored polish from one fingernail. “Not that I could tell. He wasn’t the type to change diapers or push a stroller, but I think he loved our son. Since the divorce, he’d made a real effort to spend time with him.”
Dirk’s mind surged with more questions, many of them difficult to put into words. One took shape at last. “Who else knows?”
“No one,” she said. “Donald was already dead, and we saw no reason to tell Herb.”
“What about Jeff?”
A slight shake of her head rippled her hair. She’d worn it loose today, in a long blond pageboy that made her look like a teenager. “I do want to tell him eventually, but I have to find the right way and the right time. I don’t want to confuse him.”
Confuse him? Dirk thought wryly. How about confusing an adult male who was trying, painfully, to absorb an impossible fact?
He had a son. A child. His own offspring.
He’d known this was possible, of course, when he made the donation, but he’d figured a child would belong to him only in the most abstract sense. In real life, any issue would be Lowell’s, legally and emotionally.
Now Lowell was gone. And Dirk wasn’t merely an uncle anymore. This revelation had changed everything in his universe.
They pulled into Joni’s driveway. As he exited the car, Dirk scanned the area for danger and was even more relieved than usual not to see anything amiss. One crisis at a time was plenty.
In the kitchen, Joni heated soup and rolls for lunch. “I guess I dropped a bombshell. huh?” she said. “I assumed you knew.”
“A reasonable assumption,” he admitted. “What on earth was my brother thinking when he made up such a story?”
“That you would never find out, I suppose.” She carried their soup mugs to the table. “If Lowell were alive, you wouldn’t have.”
“Lies have a way of being found out, don’t they?” he said. “I’m glad you want to tell...Jeff the truth.” He couldn’t say the words “our son.” Jeff had been Lowell’s son for eight years, and that bond would never, and should never, be entirely broken.
As he ate, Dirk was struck by the casual intimacy of the scene. He was sitting across a kitchen table from the woman who had borne him a child.
From her scattering of freckles to the unaltered boyishness of her body, there was something intrinsically honest about Joni. Wispy bangs fell across her forehead as she curled in the chair, regarding him with mingled sympathy and wariness.
He relished being able to read her moods, at least some of the time. For a man who had learned early to hide his own feelings, her emotional openness came as a relief.
“How would you like to handle this?” he asked
“Breaking the news to Jeff, you mean?”
“Not exactly.” He buttered a roll, paying so little attention that he buttered his index finger, as well “You know my work is overseas, which puts quite a distance between us. Would you like me to come home for holidays, that sort of thing? We could work out a schedule, something you and Jeff could count on.”
“Dirk, I never meant to impose on you.” Sunlight streaming through the window intensified the green depths of her eyes. “You’re free to go on as before, if you like.”
“That hardly seems fair to Jeff.”
“He likes you, and I think a relationship with you would help him as he grows,” she said. “But I know you only agreed to be a donor because Lowell pressured you. As far as I’m concerned, you have no obligations.”
No obligations. That was what Dirk had always wanted—a life filled with nothing except what he took on voluntarily. He’d realized in retrospect that he hadn’t postponed marrying Elena simply because of business opportunities. He hadn’t been able to face committing himself permanently to satisfying someone else’s needs. The prospect was like being locked inside an airless room, the way he’d felt growing up beneath his father’s thumb.
Jeff was different; he hadn’t had any say in the arrangements made by grown-ups, and he could hardly be expected to meet his own needs. Besides, being around the boy was more fun than Dirk would have expected.
“I owe him something,” he said. “Whether I chose this situation or not, I’m the only father he’s got left.”
Joni gave him a ghost of a smile. “Herb would enjoy seeing you more often, too. Sure, some kind of holiday schedule would be fine.”
“We can work it out over the next few days.”
“Great.”
They finished their meal with no further discussion. Afterward, Dirk checked the premises again, made sure Joni locked the door behind him, then set off. He had a lot of ground to cover in his investigation and he couldn’t afford to delay.
First, however, he paid a visit to Viento del Mar’s only car wash. While soapy water cleaned the red paint from his hood. he called one of his assistants in Rome and went over the progress of a new business shipping medicinal herbs from Indonesia to France. He had completed the initial work and turned over day-to-day operations to a manager. Nevertheless, he kept an eye on his projects to make sure everything ran smoothly.
All traces of the paint were gone by the time he tipped the attendant. Whoever had thrown it had either intended more to annoy than to harm or had simply seized whatever paint was at hand. The killer, or someone acting on impulse?
The route to the Peterson estate took Dirk past the Viento del Mar Country Club. From the road, he could see part of the golf course and, behind a stand of trees, the red-tiled roof of the main building.
As a young man, he’d enjoyed having access to a swimming pool, weight room, racquetball courts and other facilities. He’d paid little attention to the gossip, the social climbing or the snobbery.
Now he realized how uncomfortable the setting must have been for Joni, especially after Kim returned from San Francisco. Nevertheless, as Lowell’s wife, she might have taken her place if she’d shared the in crowd’s values.
But she hadn’t. Thank goodness.
He turned from the main road onto winding Pioneer Lane. It snaked through a canyon, working its way upward through heavy brush. A couple of miles along, he angled onto a private driveway. Palm trees lined the route to the one-story Spanish-style mansion. With its courtyard, tile-covered fountain and arched entryway, it reminded him of a Moorish palace.
Behind it lay tennis courts, a five-car garage and a guest cottage used by the three full-time staff members. Since Lowell’s death, the main house was unoccup
ied; Herb had moved out long ago, seeking a more convivial atmosphere in town.
In his will, Lowell had left the house equally to Dirk and Jeff, but neither was ever likely to live there. Dirk hoped he could sell the place to a family that would make good use of it. A family with children...
Unbidden, an image popped into his mind of Jeff sailing a toy boat in the fountain while Joni watched, laughing. How could Lowell have been foolish enough to let them go?
He parked in a shaded turnaround. As he got out, a portly woman in a flowered shirtwaist dress hurried down the front steps. From her stiffly coiffed hair to her polished pumps, there was no mistaking the redoubtable Mrs. Wright.
The housekeeper had nearly reached her station wagon when she became aware of him. She halted abruptly, lost her grip on her purse and snatched it halfway to the ground. “My goodness! You startled me!”
“Sorry.” He gave her a friendly grin. “I didn’t mean to.”
Hired during his mother’s final illness when he was twelve, Mrs. Wright had made sure Dirk was ferried to and from school and had a lunch packed each morning. She wasn’t the type to get personally involved, and he hadn’t wanted her to.
“We’re glad to have you back.” Composure recovered, she spoke with her customary dignity. “You should tell Cook if you’re planning to stay for dinner.”
“I’m not moving back,” he said. “I need to go through my brother’s papers.”
“I see.” Her expression remained impassive.
“Off to run errands?”
“So to speak.” The frown lines deepened in her forehead. “I hope you don’t expect me to account for every minute of my day.”
Somewhat taken aback by her frostiness, Dirk tried to reassure her. “Considering that you’re on the premises almost all the time, certainly not.” Mrs. Wright shared the three-bedroom guest house with the groundskeeper and his wife, the cook. “Take as long as you like.”
With a nod, she departed. As he let himself into the house, Dirk wondered why Mrs. Wright had become so defensive when he’d only been making conversation. He also wondered why she’d taken a dislike to Joni. Had his sister-in-law’s open, frank personality unsettled the housekeeper? Or did Mrs. Wright have something to hide?
He really ought to be careful about becoming paranoid, Dirk chided himself. The housekeeper had always kept her private life to herself.
Even if he hadn’t known how much she cared about Lowell, Mrs. Wright was overweight and probably in her sixties. It would take more imagination than he possessed to picture her lurking in the woods at night, let alone overcoming Lowell on Joni’s patio.
Dirk paced along a hallway past the oversize, sunken living room. Dark woods and sparse Mediterranean furniture created a cool impression, warmed by colorful throw pillows and wall hangings.
He thought of Joni living here, sharing breakfast with Lowell, bringing home Jeff as a baby. If she’d made any changes to reflect her personality, however, they’d been removed long ago.
Bypassing a large den and another hallway, he reached the master suite. This had once been his parents’ room and then Lowell’s, but thanks to the efficient Mrs. Wright, it appeared as impersonal as the public rooms. No hairbrushes bristled on the dressing table. In the entertainment corner, the CDs and laser discs stood neatly in place. Whatever mess the police had made in their search, Mrs. Wright must have cleared it.
Dirk slid open one of the two double closets. Inside, Lowell’s clothes hung neatly, the suits and shirts in cleaners’ bags, the athletic clothes pressed and placed on hangers. Everything was so tidy, he detected not even a trace of aftershave lotion.
In the second closet, he found two tuxedos in garment bags and rows of expensive leather shoes on racks. Dirk checked for jogging shoes that might have left the tread he’d seen, but there were none.
An office opened off the bedroom. At one time, it had served as his mother’s sewing and dressing room, but wood paneling and office furniture had transformed it into a man’s hideaway. Inside, Dirk found a desk, a wooden filing cabinet and a leather couch. A top-of-the line computer and a printer-fax-copier covered the desktop.
Through the blinds, he could see the patch of lawn where his grandfather had long ago erected a swing set and a play fort They’d been removed during his teen years, but it seemed a shame that Lowell hadn’t replaced them for Jeff.
Easing onto the swivel chair, Dirk turned on the computer and searched its memory. Lowell’s penchant for organization simplified the job: files from the printing company were grouped in one directory, games in another. The large number of entertainment programs mostly featured a sports theme. Even the preprogrammed Internet sites turned out to be either business or sports related.
After determining that the files held nothing relevant to his investigation, Dirk switched off the computer and went through the desk. In the top drawer, he noted neatly laid-out pens, pads, a stapler and two pairs of scissors. Below that, he found a few receipts and the latest quarterly reports from mutual funds.
The filing cabinet yielded income-tax forms, financial statements, insurance information and routine correspondence. Nothing useful there, either.
The family’s safe had been placed, not very cleverly, behind a painting. After opening it with the combination the family lawyer had given him, Dirk found only a duplicate of Lowell’s will alongside a few other legal documents.
With a sense of frustration, he closed it and replaced the painting. What had he hoped to uncover anyway?
Some detail that would help clear Joni, he admitted silently. Or at least something that might sway MacDougall’s mind.
But what? If there’d been a bitter dispute of the kind likely to inspire murder, it could hardly have been kept secret in this town. And had Lowell received any threats, he would’ve turned them over to the police or his lawyer.
The bathroom proved equally sterile; even the cord to the electric shaver was fastidiously coiled. Returning to the bedroom, Dirk sifted through the nightstand but found nothing unusual.
There were some items of jewelry in the top drawer of the dresser, along with neatly folded underwear and T-shirts. The second drawer contained an electric blanket in such pristine condition that it might never have been used. The bottom drawer was empty.
Irrationally, Dirk wished some hint remained of his brother’s presence. Whiskers in the sink. A magazine open on the nightstand. Mismatched socks in the drawer.
It was as if Mrs. Wright had removed any sign of Lowell’s individuality, he thought with a flash of resentment. The memorial service wasn’t even scheduled until Monday afternoon. What was her hurry to tidy up?
But then, he recalled, she’d always dealt with stress by throwing herself into her work. When his mother died, the closet and bathroom had been cleared right after the funeral. He supposed a psychologist might say that such compulsiveness was a way of regaining control when her world went topsy-turvy.
Returning to the top drawer, Dirk examined the jewelry. Those items should go to Jeff, he determined, so he removed a dress watch, a couple of gold tie clasps and a set of silver cuff links. He was about to close the drawer when he decided to feel around the back of it one more time. In a corner, his hand brushed something velvety, and he pulled it out.
It was a small black jeweler’s box. Inside, two large diamonds winked from a pair of crescent earrings. A crumpled piece of stiff white paper was wedged to one side. Smoothed out, it proved to be Lowell’s business card. A message in his brother’s jagged writing said, “Kim. No hard feelings. L.”
On the back, in a different hand, was scribbled, “You can’t buy me off. You’ll pay, but not in money.” There was no signature.
So Kim had returned the peace offering with a threat. That was hardly incriminating enough to make her a suspect, though, Dirk reflected as he tucked the velvet box into his pocket. Any woman who’d been dumped might write a note like that.
A glance through the rest of the house uncovered
nothing more of interest His time would be better spent at the printing plant, where round-the-clock shifts worked all weekend. Dirk had a lot of people to interview and documents to examine, especially relating to a publishing venture his brother had planned.
Even if he couldn’t learn anything useful about Lowell, he needed to put the place in order. For Jeff’s sake.
For his son.
BY THE TIME THE OWENSES dropped Jeff at home, Joni had awakened from her nap and started dinner. Dirk wouldn’t be eating with them; he’d phoned to say he’d grab a sandwich at the plant.
“What are we having?” Jeff asked as soon as Bobby and his mother drove off. Fred had already left for his regular Saturday-night basketball game. “Oh, good, spaghetti! Mom, you should see our costumes. I mean, they’re not done yet. but Mrs. Owens has this pattern...”
He chattered on while Joni stirred the sauce. The pattern did sound perfect, and thanks to Kathryn’s skill with a sewing machine, the costumes would probably turn out better than anything they could buy at a store.
Joni did her best to return the Owenses’ kindness by writing press releases for Kathryn’s garden club and editing the scripts Fred used when calling insurance prospects. Also, last summer, she’d tutored both boys in spelling, a subject given short shrift by their school curriculum.
Still, she would never be able to do as much for the Owenses as they did for her. Whisking Jeff away from the soccer field today, for example. Thanks to them, he hadn’t heard Kim’s cruel words. He only married you on the rebound...You cheap, social-climbing little tramp!
None of it was true. Lowell hadn’t married her until two years after Kim took her heart to San Francisco. He’d had plenty of time to recover. As for social climbing, anyone who knew her realized how laughable that accusation was. But a lot of people didn’t know her. They made assumptions or they listened to the grapevine.
Dirk’s accompanying her to the game might have set their tongues wagging in yet another direction, she supposed. Well, that would pass soon enough when he returned to his work and left Viento del Mar behind.
His Secret Son Page 9