by Jan Burke
“Yes. If Arthur had been proven to be the killer, they were the next in line for money—and not just Gwen’s inheritance. They could have brought a civil suit against Arthur, and taken his money, too.”
“But you seem sure he wasn’t the killer. Why?”
“He loved Gwen. Maybe not in the way a husband should love a wife, but they were friends. He had his business. He could have left her a long time before she died and he would have been fine. But I think he was grateful to Gwen. She gave him a way to get out from under Gerald’s thumb—that was Gerald’s big surprise.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Gerald sort of bullied Arthur. Ordered him around. Of course, Gerald was the head of the household after his folks died, and he took on a big responsibility at a young age. But he just couldn’t seem to understand that Arthur was growing up. Gwen saw it. And after the wedding, she stood up for Arthur in a way that just shocked Gerald—shocked us all, really. She encouraged Arthur to get a driver’s license and a car and to travel off the farm.”
“All the things she had never done?”
She nodded. “Exactly. And one day—I think this might have even been the day of the wedding—she told Gerald off in a way that maybe she had always wanted to tell Papa DeMont off. I had never imagined she had that much spine.”
“So Arthur felt indebted to her.”
“Oh, yes. And as he got older, I think he also saw how very much she depended on him. Maybe—”
But before she could finish her sentence, she was interrupted by a loud male voice roaring a random litany of oaths and obscenities that turned the white room blue and Leda Rose’s face red. It wasn’t just one cannonball of cussing that hit in a single shot; it was a rapid, rat-a-tat-tat, machine-gun-fire swear-o-rama. It was hard not to be impressed.
“Excuse me,” Leda said, but she was no sooner off the couch than a leathery wisp of a man wheeled himself into the room. This had to be Horace DeMont. He was closely followed by his great-granddaughter, who had her arms folded and a mulish look on her face.
You could have put three of him into that chair, and still had elbow room. He was wearing a bathrobe and pajamas, his head looked too big for his neck, and most of his hair had abandoned his mottled pate. You might not have thought he had any fire left in him until you looked at his face. There was so much anger burning there, it would probably keep Horace DeMont around long enough to get another look at Halley’s Comet.
“My father,” Leda said, having recovered her poise. She moved toward the back of the wheelchair.
“Who’s this?” he barked. There was nothing wrong with his ability to speak, but a minute earlier I had already heard more than enough to know that.
“None of your business,” she said, giving me a warning glance as she grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. “Why are you out here, Daddy?”
“I want apple juice, and that damned girl won’t get me any,” he said, taking his hands off the wheels, content to be pushed now that he had the attention of his daughter.
“We’re out of apple juice,” she said, guiding the chair back to the hallway.
Another string of expletives preceded them as they went down the hall, but they lacked the passion of the earlier performance.
“Poor Grandmother,” Laurie said, pushing a stray hair out of her eyes. “She has to put up with that all the time.”
“She must be very grateful for your help.”
She shrugged. “Somebody has to help her. Uncle Bobby’s too spaced out, fooling around with his inventions.”
“He’s an inventor?”
“Not really. To be an inventor, you have to make things that work, don’t you?”
I laughed. “I don’t know. I guess lots of inventors fail more often than they succeed while they’re working on their ideas.”
“Yes,” she said, “but they usually learn something from their mistakes, right?”
I left that one alone. “Do you visit him while you’re here?”
“Well, since his car problems, Grandmother has been making things for him to eat, and I bring them over to him. I hate it. He always wants to show me some new thingamajig that doesn’t work, or to be like his guinea pig or something. Nothing that would hurt me or anything, but it’s so weird. And then he says, ”No, wait! Wait! Just let me adjust this…‘ and that never works, either, so finally I just have to say, “Bye, Uncle Bobby, have a nice time!”“
“It sounds like your Grandmother has her hands full. Like I said, she must appreciate your help.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about maybe becoming one of those people who take care of old people, you know, maybe have a business doing that. It’s going to be a big business, you know. Because of all the people who are, you know, your age. The Baby Boomers. You’re all getting older.”
I laughed. “Not all of us, but for now, at least, I’d rather be in the group that is.”
She smiled. “Yeah.”
Within a few minutes, Leda came back out, looking weary. “Your great-grandfather is a mean old son of a bitch, Laurie.”
“No kidding,” Laurie said, apparently used to such proclamations.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Kelly, but I have a brother to feed and a nasty old man to calm down. I would talk to you more, but Laurie and I will be busy for a while now.”
“Please don’t apologize,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. And I’ll tell my cousin what you said.”
“And avoid Mr. Richmond,” she added.
“Yes, I will. I wondered—since I’m on my way out anyway, would you like me to take your brother’s meal to him?”
Laurie and Leda exchanged a look that clearly said they had found a pigeon ripe for the plucking, and just weren’t sure if they had the heart to grab my feathers. “Oh, I couldn’t—” Leda began.
“Nonsense. Believe me, this is the least I can do for you after taking up your time today.”
“I’ll get it ready for you,” Laurie said, hurrying off to the kitchen before her grandmother could refuse a second time.
Leda smiled after her.
“You must be very proud of her,” I said.
“I am. She’s a good-hearted girl.” She looked up at me. “And your uncle is a good-hearted man. He deserves your forgiveness.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m beginning to see that perhaps he does.”
“You know,” she said, “I didn’t get a chance to finish what I was saying before my father interrupted us. My dad provided a perfect example of what I was going to tell you, though.”
“I hope you weren’t about to tell me that,” I said, and she laughed.
“No, no. I meant, his situation is a good example. Until a few years ago, my father was strong and active. People always guessed him to be twenty years younger than he was. Then about five years ago, his health began to fail—and to fail quickly. It was as if those years caught up to him all at once. He hates being sick. He hates being dependent on me. He thinks of me as his jailer, not his helper. But I hate it, too. And I’m as much his prisoner as he is mine.”
Her face was set in angry lines as she said this. She looked away from me, and stared out the windows, toward her brother’s house. Gradually, her face softened, and her voice was quiet when she spoke again. “You might say, ”Just put him in a home, then.“ Maybe someday it will come to that. But right now, while I can still care for him, I can’t think of setting him aside, or leaving him to strangers—well,” she added with a smile, “not on most days.”
“No one could blame you.”
“And I can’t blame Arthur. Until you’ve been there—it’s hard to understand. But I think Gwen’s dependence on Arthur became like that. I think it made him feel confined. His business gave him his first taste of freedom. And Gwen learned to be a little more self-reliant, although if he left her alone too long, Bobby or Daddy came by looking for a handout.” She shook her head. “His so-called secret family—your aunt and your cousin
—they gave him his real life, a more balanced life. I was so sorry that they didn’t stay together after Gwen was killed, although I can see why it would have been almost impossible. I’m sure your aunt felt very hurt and betrayed.”
“She did, but—things change,” I said faltering for a way to say more without admitting how many lies of one kind or another I had racked up in the last hour. “Leda, there’s so much I’d like to tell you, but I think I’ll wait until I can bring my cousin with me—if that would be all right with you? Perhaps we can come at a time when your father is sleeping or won’t be disturbed by us?”
She smiled. “That would be wonderful. I’ve never had a chance to meet Arthur’s son.”
Laurie arrived with a grocery sack but hesitated before handing it to me. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I took it from her, said good-bye, and made my way across the street. About halfway across I had a sensation of being watched, and looked over my shoulder. I couldn’t see anyone looking out the tinted-glass windows, but I could have sworn that somewhere on the other side of that glass, Horace DeMont was boring holes in my back with his angry stare.
“Come in!” a voice called from a speaker near the front door of Robert DeMont’s home. I hesitated only for a moment before trying the door; it was unlocked. But as I opened it, I couldn’t see anyone waiting for me in the room beyond. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there—the room was not one that could be taken in at a glance. I had been able to guess the decor of Leda’s home, but even looking at the interior of Robert’s place, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Except for the spaces taken up by windows, the walls were lined with bookcases. Not all of these bookcases held books; many of the shelves were crowded with gadgets and tools. Apparently the books that had once occupied the shelves were stacked on the floor—not much of the floor was visible. A maze of worktables was covered with drawings, metal parts, gears, bottles of adhesives, soldering irons, magnifiers, cardboard boxes, clamps, more tools and a host of unidentifiable objects. The tables each had their own chairs; most were metal folding chairs, a few looked like used office chairs.
To my right was a door that seemed to open onto a hallway, and at the other end of the front room, another doorway, probably leading to a kitchen. No sign of DeMont.
I was about to call his name when I heard a toilet flush. I stepped inside and waited for a respectable amount of time. Just as I was about to call out, “Are you feeling okay?” I heard another flush. And another. About six in succession before he yelled, “Bring my dinner back here!”
Not especially anxious to obey, and wondering why anyone in such apparent gastric distress would want to eat—let alone eat in that particular room—I said, “I’ll just leave it on the kitchen table.”
“No you won’t!” he called and I could hear him moving down the hallway. He stopped in the doorway and looked at me. “A woman!” he grinned, “That’s great! Just what I need! What happened to your face? Oh, never mind, that’s a rude thing to ask.”
He was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, probably in his late sixties or early seventies, but in good shape. Having heard that he was an inventor who needed to have his meals delivered, I suppose I had expected someone who would be frail and pale. He was tanned and fit and seemed perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Or anyone else, for that matter.
His hair was white, his eyes blue under snowy brows. He waved his hand to me in a “hurry up” motion and took off back down the hallway. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, “I want to show you an invention that is going to save marriages all across America.”
What the hell, I thought, and cautiously followed, keeping my distance.
He walked into the bathroom and moved to the toilet. I was just about to turn right back around when he said, “Watch the toilet seat.”
As he stood there, facing the toilet in the classic standing male position, the seat slowly but steadily lifted. He turned to me, beaming. “Now watch!”
He moved away from it with a jaunty step and it flushed.
“Now you try it,” he said.
“Uh, no thanks,” I said.
He gave me a sly smile and said, “Okay, you big chicken. Watch this!”
He approached the toilet, turned his back on it—as if he were about to take a seat—and slowly but surely, the seat came back down. He lowered himself onto it, grinned at me, and got off. Again the jaunty step, and the toilet flushed.
“You see?” he said excitedly.
“Yes. Amazing.”
His grin faded. “What’s the problem?”
“What’s what problem?”
“What s the problem that is preventing you from being enthusiastic about a product that could revolutionize the sleeping habits of millions?”
“Sleeping habits?”
“Of course!” he exclaimed, as if I were the biggest dunderhead he had ever laid eyes on. “Every night, all across America, millions of women fall onto wet, cold porcelain surfaces. And why? Because some man has forgotten to put the seat back down! Now how is any poor gal going to get back to sleep after something like that happens to her?”
“It’s very thoughtful of you to try to be of help—”
“I hear a but coming!” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A b-u-t. You like it, but—” He stretched the last word out.
“But it needs to rise and lower faster. By the time that seat was starting on its way down, most women would have already hit the porcelain. And I don’t even want to think about what will happen while a half-asleep man waits for that seat to rise all the way up.”
“Well, he better not rush it,” DeMont said, “”cause this thing is operated on an electrical pressure-sensitive mat and if he hits the mat instead of the toilet, he just might get electrocuted.“
“Some women might consider that a fitting punishment,” I said, “but I don’t think Consumer Product Safety is going to give it the old green light. Maybe you need to work a few of those little bugs out.”
He seemed so dejected at this, I added, “But I like your front-door setup. How did you know I was there?”
“I didn’t know it was you, exactly,” he said, reanimated. “But that’s a pressure-sensitive mat, too.”
“How does it work?”
“Anybody steps on it, it sends a signal to my recorder, which plays a little tape and that’s what you hear over the speaker.”
“ ‘Come in’?”
“Yes.”
“It greets everyone by saying, ”Come in‘?“ I asked.
“Sure.”
“But what if you don’t want someone to come in?”
“Why, you just lock the door,” he said. “That’s all.”
Unwilling to argue the possible shortcomings of that system, I said, “Maybe you should eat dinner in another room.”
“Okay,” he said cheerfully, and led the way to the kitchen.
The kitchen was far less cluttered than the rest of the house, but I had a feeling his sister and Laurie were responsible for its relative state of cleanliness. I set the bag down on the table as he went to a cupboard. I was wondering what story I should tell him to get him talking to me on subjects other than toilet seats and doormats when he said, “Sit down, Irene, I’ll get you a glass of my special power drink.”
But I stayed standing, and didn’t loosen my grip on the bag. “How do you know my name?”
He laughed, but didn’t answer right away. I watched him warily as he set two tumblers on the table and moved to the refrigerator. “Let’s see,” he said, pulling out a pitcher of something that had settled into several layers that were various shades of red. He walked over to a blender, poured the contents of the pitcher into it, put the lid on the blender, then stood back and clapped his hands. The blender began whirring.
“I put one of those doodads on its power supply,” he said, speaking up over the whine of the blender, “so you could start and stop it from anywhere in the room.
”
I didn’t bother to point out that remote control of a blender was not worth much if you were already forced to stand next to it to fill it and empty it. I just nodded, watching the liquid in the blender turn a single shade of bright red.
But when he clapped a second time, the blender kept going. “Dag nab it!” he said. Given his father’s virtuoso swearing, it surprised me. He tried clapping again, and still it whined on. Finally he went over and pushed a button on the machine. That stopped it. He clapped again, and nothing happened. He pushed a button, and nothing happened. He took the lid off and peered down into it. “Wonder if the dang thing’s jammed?” he said, reaching for a knife.
“Uh, shouldn’t you unplug it first?” I said.