by Jan Burke
He smiled at my look of surprise.
“Yes,” he said. “A hard life. My dad said that when Gerald was barely out of short pants, my grandfather taught him how to ride the rails. They’d go all over the country, looking for farms that needed workers.”
“Are your grandparents still alive?”
He shook his head. “They were killed in an accident on the sugar beet farm. Papa DeMont—that’s what my dad called Gwendolyn’s grandfather—felt sorry for Gerald and my dad, and let them stay in the house they had been living in on the farm. He also gave Gerald a permanent job. I think Gerald was still a teenager.”
“How old was your dad?”
“My dad was very young. Still in elementary school. Gerald wanted him to stay in school, but he dropped out when he was twelve—he was already hopelessly frustrated with it because he couldn’t read. He wasn’t stupid—in fact, when I think of all he had to do to cope with his illiteracy, his strategies for hiding it… well, that’s another story.”
“So he went to work on the sugar beet farm.”
“Yes. I guess Papa DeMont saw that my dad could learn in other ways and took him on as sort of a challenge. My dad used to swear that was how he got his real education—following Papa DeMont around, listening to him talk, watching him work. My father had a natural ability with plants, so I don’t think Mr. DeMont regretted hiring him as a gardener.”
He cast a quick glance at me, trying to gauge my reaction.
“I don’t remember much about your parents’ home,” I said, “but I do remember the beautiful plants and flowers. I think my mother was jealous of her sister’s gardens—Arthur’s gardens.”
His brows drew together, and he looked away again. After a moment, he said, “Your husband—Frank?”
“Yes.”
“You said he planted the garden in your backyard?”
“Yes. Unlike me, he has a green thumb.”
He smiled. “My father didn’t pass his abilities on to me. I like Frank’s garden. When will he be back?”
I shrugged. “Soon, I hope.”
I called to the dogs, who were getting a little too far ahead of us. “I’ve forgotten now—how old was Gwendolyn when they married?” I asked.
“Forty-five. My dad was sixteen.”
“She was almost thirty years older than Arthur.”
“Yes. They were already friends. I never learned a lot about their marriage, but he did tell me that he was her only real friend. When Papa De-Mont—her grandfather—died, she was grief-stricken. I guess she did seduce my father, but he said he thought she turned to him because she was so lonely, so sad. He never seemed to feel angry at her about it.”
“But he came to regret marrying her?”
“I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it. By the time he married my mother, Gwendolyn was about fifty. He was twenty-two. He said he fell in love with my mother when he was old enough to know what it meant. He said he loved her then, and he would love her all of his life. I believe that—I think that was the truth.”
He stopped walking and turned to me. “I don’t really know the truth about why he stayed married to Gwendolyn. Sometimes he said it was because she was so lonely, and he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. Sometimes he said he loved her in a different way. Once he told me he owed her a kind of debt—one that money couldn’t repay. He told me that he was still paying on that debt, but wouldn’t explain what that meant. Another time, he just said it was too complex to explain, and we should just get on with our lives.”
I didn’t say anything, but with his next sentence, he spoke the accusation I had held back.
“It could have been that he wanted the money,” he said, “and that divorcing her would have meant giving up a fortune.”
“Do you think that’s it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to believe that’s why, but I don’t know. He didn’t like talking to me about her, or his life with her, or her money. But I never got the sense that his reluctance to talk about her was because he hated her; it was the habit of keeping those worlds separate, I suppose.
His marriage to her was always divided from his life with my mother and me.“
I whistled for the dogs, who were wrestling with one another a short distance behind us. Deke and Dunk broke apart, then went barreling past us.
“Your parents were separated,” I said, “but he was with you on the night of the murder?”
He hesitated only slightly before saying, “You’ve seen the scars—the old ones—on my hand. My father was at our home when I cut myself. He carried me into the emergency room. If you don’t believe me, there are all kinds of people who witnessed that.”
“I’m not accusing you of having lied about that night,” I said.
He smiled a little.
“I’m not,” I insisted. “I just wondered what he was doing over there if Aunt Briana was so hurt and angry.”
“He missed us. He needed us.”
“He was trying to patch things up?”
“No,” he said slowly, considering the question. “I think he was trying to accept the fact that his whole world was falling apart, but he wanted it to fall apart a little more slowly.”
“But the investigation brought you back together?”
“Briefly. Technically, the investigation is still open, of course. But even when the case was actively being investigated, Harold Richmond always refused to believe there was any possibility of another suspect. That was another reason he got demoted—he just didn’t do enough to investigate other suspects.”
“So he kept pursuing your dad.”
“Right. He added to my mother’s misery. He would corner her when she was, say, out shopping. During hours I was in school. He’d start out cajoling, then he’d get frustrated and angry with her—sometimes he was drunk. He’d tell her that he knew she had been paid off to lie for my dad, or tell her that he knew my folks had plotted to kill Gwendolyn, and that my mom had better not try to get back together with my dad.”
“Why didn’t she want her name on that restraining order?”
He shook his head. “She said Richmond was part of her penance. No priest ever assigned it, of course. It was her own idea. She spent a lot of years punishing herself.”
“For what?”
He looked down at his hand and shrugged.
I waited.
“For sleeping with a married man.”
“She didn’t know he was married!” I protested.
“Then for still wanting him, I suppose. For having brought shame to her family. For having a bastard child.”
“I don’t believe that she was ever ashamed of you.”
“How would you know?” he asked.
“Are we back to that again? All right, because I saw how much she wanted you before you were born. Because—”
He held up a hand. “Okay, you’re right. Maybe she wasn’t ashamed of me. Not of me, personally, but she was ashamed that I wasn’t legitimate. She blamed herself for my being a bastard. Every time I got in trouble at school for fighting someone over it, it was her fault—all her fault, she would say.”
“But Richmond wasn’t really a part of that. Why did she decide he was her punishment?”
He stared at his bandaged hand again. When he looked over at me again, he seemed to be studying my face.
“What?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The night of Gwendolyn’s murder. Do you really want to know the answers to all your questions? What if it means your aunt Briana helped Gwendolyn’s murderer to escape? Or that your newly rediscovered cousin is also an accessory after the fact?”
I didn’t answer right away. “Maybe you did something wrong when you were very young. Maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. I do know someone tried to kill you last night, and I’m also certain that the hit-and-run accident that killed your mother was no accident at all. That’s what con
cerns me now. And yes, it all seems to have something to do with Gwendolyn DeMont’s murder.”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly and went on. “I don’t have much family left, Travis. You’re my cousin. That’s true whether or not you’ve done something wrong. But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything you can about anything that has a bearing on the DeMont case.”
He stopped walking, studied me again, and said, “All right, Irene Kelly. I’ll tell you the truth.” He held up his bandaged right hand, and at first I thought he was going to mimic a courtroom oath. But he said, “I saved my father with this hand. That wasn’t my idea at the time. In fact, I was enraged with him.”
“I don’t understand—”
“On the night of Gwendolyn’s murder, when he came to our house, my father touched the pane of glass, the one I broke with my fist. He touched it before I broke it. He left a bloody handprint on it.”
“A bloody… was he hurt?”
He smiled and dropped his hand to his side. “Kind of you to ask that first. No. He wasn’t hurt.”
“Gwendolyn’s blood.”
“Yes. For years, I thought perhaps he had murdered her, despite his denials. But one day, he got me to listen to him long enough to ask me a question. And that question made me change my mind.”
I waited.
“Let me back up a little—that night, I was watching my father through a window before he tried to come in the house. I watched him for some time. I saw him close up, and after I was hurt—when he came into the house—he held me in his arms.” Again he looked out over the water. “My father’s question was, ”Before I touched you, did you see blood on me anywhere other than the palm of that one hand?“”
Travis looked back at me. “The answer was no.”
19
Before I could respond, he said, “Just think about it for a while. I’m not saying it proves anything, and it may raise as many questions as it answers. When I started thinking about it, I realized I had to set aside a lot of assumptions I had been holding on to for a long time.”
We had reached the foot of the stairway leading up to the street. I turned to him and said, “Everything I’ve learned about Harold Richmond makes me believe he has a copy of the DeMont murder file. I’m going to try to get a look at it this afternoon. With what you’ve had to deal with lately, are you sure you want to come along?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said.
“There are some other people we need to talk to as soon as we can. This ‘W’ guy and your lawyer, for starters.”
“Mr. Ulkins and Mr. Brennan,” he said.
“Yes. Can you get in touch with them?”
“Sure. Mr. Brennan often spends time away from the city on weekends, but I can leave a message on his service. W—Ulkins—should be in the office today.”
“But with your father’s death—”
“He works for me as well. If he’s gone for the day, I’d still like to stop by the office and check for messages. The office is downtown.”
“You have a key?”
“Yes, so that’s no problem.”
The dogs were getting impatient, starting to stray back down the beach, so I called to them and we began climbing the stairs.
“Who else will we be trying to see?” Travis asked.
We. That was what I wanted, right? “I want to talk to Dr. Curtis and a priest at St. Anthony’s.”
“Which priest?”
“The one who said your father’s funeral Mass.”
He stopped climbing. “How could you possibly be sure his funeral Mass was at St. Anthony’s?”
“Your mother went to it.”
“And how could you possibly know that?” a voice called from above us.
We looked up to see Jim McCain leaning over the railing near the top of the stairs.
“Shit,” I said. How long had he been listening?
Travis looked between us.
“Travis Maguire,” I said, “meet Detective Jim McCain, LAPD Homicide. He’s investigating your mother’s death.”
McCain smiled and said, “Glad to see you’re all right, Mr. Maguire.” He looked at the bandaged hand and added, “Or are you?”
“Have you found the driver of the car?” Travis asked.
“No, I’m sorry, not yet. We’re working on it, though,” he said. “Even on the weekend.”
“At the beach?” Travis replied.
McCain stopped smiling. “Wherever it takes me. Perhaps Ms. Kelly would be so kind as to let us continue this discussion in a more private place?”
“Sure,” I said. “You never know who might be eavesdropping around here.”
“People with nothing to hide—” McCain began.
“—still enjoy their constitutional rights,” I finished.
We walked in silence most of the way to the house, but just before we got to the front door, Jack came roaring down the street on his Harley, back from whatever errand he had taken care of for Travis. He stopped in front of the house and called, “Everything okay?”
I nodded, and he watched as we went inside.
The first few minutes were spent with McCain telling Travis almost as little about the accident as he had told me; when Travis complained, McCain looked over at me and said, “Perhaps some other time.”
“You suspect Irene?” Travis asked in disbelief.
“This investigation is still in its early stages,” he said, and before Travis could say more, asked him if he was aware that his mother had willed her entire estate to me.
Travis stared at him, then laughed. “Of course I know!”
“What?” McCain said.
“My mother made sure I knew all about it.” He glanced over at me. “You know the Maguire temper, Irene.”
“But…” McCain began.
“The date on that will, Detective McCain, will be just before my mother moved to her last apartment.” He paused, all the amusement of a moment before gone. “I’m ashamed to say that we parted in anger.”
“And why would that be?” McCain said.
“Travis,” I said, “maybe you should call your attorney.”
He ignored me, and answered, “You know about my parents’ bigamous marriage?”
“Yes,” McCain said.
“Because my mother never forgave my father for that, she forbade me to have contact with him. When I grew past the age when she could forbid it, she simply resented it. She tolerated it, though, until I told her I was accepting money from my father. At that point she said she would no longer live with me, and told me, quite dramatically, that if I was taking anything from him, I’d get nothing from her. That was when she produced a handwritten will leaving everything she owned to Irene, and waved it under my nose.”
“So the last time you saw your mother alive was when?” Detective McCain asked.
Eyes downcast, he said softly, “I helped her to move into her apartment. She didn’t speak to me.”
Whatever else he might have told McCain was interrupted by my barking dogs, up on their feet and scrambling before I heard an imperious knock at the door.
Rachel came striding in before I could warn her—but apparently she already knew McCain was here. “What the hell is going on here, Mac?”
“Hello, Rachel. I was wondering if I’d get to see you today.”
“What’s going on?” she repeated.
“A murder investigation. You have a problem with that?”
She made a show of looking around. “I don’t see a lawyer.”
“Don’t need to read the card to anybody at this point—or have you forgotten all about how law enforcement works?”
“I remember exactly how it works. Which is why I’m asking you to get out. Now.”
“I was invited in,” he said.
Her hands were on her hips. “I don’t care who invited you in, I’m inviting you to get out.”
“You don’t live here.”
“Okay,” I said, “then I’m the one w
ho’s asking you to go.”
He started to say something, looked back at Rachel, then shook his head. He stood up, which didn’t give him too much height on her, and said softly, “You turning your back on your old friends, Rach?”
“I could ask you the same question.”