“Pull directly into the parking garage of my building. I’ll give you the code. That way you won’t have to deal with the reporters.”
I’ve never been to Cal’s place. He moved into the penthouse apartment just a month before we met. The building is brand-new and largely unoccupied, the developer having over-estimated Palmyrton’s desire for downtown luxury dwellings. But Cal seems confident he made a good deal and that the market will catch up to him.
I press a few buttons and glide into the garage, leaving the rabble of reporters outside gnashing their teeth. I’m on P1, which is entirely empty. Cal’s car must be on the next level. I park near the elevator and take a deep breath to steady my nerves.
As I glide up ten floors to Cal’s place, I compose my questions. After thirty years, I’m within striking distance of the truth.
I ring the bell. Seconds later I’m enveloped in Cal’s arms. I bury my head in his shoulder and inhale his subtle scent. Jesus, everything they say about pheromones is true. My attraction to him is primal. Even with everything I’m desperate to know, there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to lie wordlessly in his arms. Finally I pull away and look around.
What a man cave! Across a polished expanse of hardwood, two buttery chocolate brown sofas flank a gleaming glass and metal coffee table. Floor-to-ceiling windows dominate one wall, framing the bright bustle of downtown. The lighting is low; soft jazz purrs in the background.
I slip my fleece jacket off. “Very nice, Cal.”
“It’s a little impersonal. The decorator chose that painting to color-coordinate with the sofa. You could help me pick something better.”
I smile, but I didn’t come here to talk art. I march to the sofa and sit down. Cal drops beside me. I keep a little distance between us so I can focus on the matter at hand.
“Spencer was my mother’s lover.” I say it without the rising lilt of a question.
“Yes.”
Even though I came here knowing this fact, Cal’s unvarnished confirmation sends a shiver across the back of my neck. This is it. I’ve been climbing, climbing, climbing to the crest of the roller coaster. Now the car is about to drop.
“How long have you known?”
“Just since you left me that message, baby. Honestly.” Cal’s eyes--anxious, pleading—seek mine “I finally got Spencer alone this afternoon. I made him tell me everything. He agreed to let me tell you—he knows he owes you the truth.”
I nod, and Cal begins to talk. “When your parents moved to Palmyrton, they renewed their friendship with Spencer and they met Anne. Spencer recommended Charlotte for the job at the PR agency. As it turns out, that was a big mistake.”
A mistake that cost my mother her life. The story of Anne and Spencer and Charlotte and Roger seems at once very distant and terribly close. I’m watching a movie, only this movie is the prequel to my own life.
“Spencer and your mother worked together long hours on his campaign,” Cal continues, sliding his arm around me. I hold myself stiffly, but I don’t push him away. “He’s not proud of what he did, Audrey, but they were both young and a little reckless. The whole thing might have blown over if it hadn’t been for your father.” Cal pauses and squeezes my shoulder. “He told you that you killed your mother, that you accidentally ran her over with the car—right?”
I nod.
“That’s what he told Spencer too, when he showed up that night. But Audrey, Spencer saw her body. The car ran over her torso, but her neck was bruised. Your father strangled her, Audrey. Strangled her in a rage of jealousy, then ran her over with the car to cover up his crime. Spencer accused him of that, but he insisted you’d done it.”
My fingers dig into Cal’s hand. What kind of father comes up with an alibi like that? How could my father have told anyone, let alone me, such an awful thing? But my father has always applied the absolute certainty of a mathematician to every aspect of his life. Whenever he made a decision—yes to math camp, no to after-prom party--his decree was absolutely non-negotiable. I can imagine him analyzing the results of the one time in his life that he acted with irrational passion. His wife was dead, his child motherless—nothing could change that. So he came up with the one alibi that could keep him out of prison and me from becoming an orphan. He moved forward and never wavered. I’m sure it must’ve seemed perfectly logical to him. We sit quietly for a moment, Cal stroking my hand, as I absorb the enormity of it. But when the wave of emotion passes, my rational mind clicks back into gear.
“But if Spencer thought my father killed Charlotte, then why did he help him get rid of the body?”
“He could see his crazy story about you running her over would never hold up. Once the police realized he’d killed her, they’d want to know why. Spencer’s affair with Charlotte would have certainly come out. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to think of his family. He did it for Anne.”
I snort. “Oh, come on, Cal—even you must see he did it for his career.”
Cal holds out his hands. “Of course, that was a consideration. But Audrey, you must believe me. Spencer loved Anne. And he cared about your mother, too. That’s why he kept her ring and entrusted it to Agnes. That night… that night was the worst night of his life.”
“Yeah, tell me about Agnes, why don’t you? How does she fit into all this? You’ve always known that Spencer knew your aunt, right?”
Cal bites his lip. “It’s complicated. Agnes worked for Anne and Spencer for nearly ten years when their kids were young. When they didn’t need a nanny anymore, they found her a new position. They always provided her with glowing references. She was devoted to them.”
“And that’s how you met Spencer—through Agnes, not through an ex-girlfriend?”
Cal nods. “Agnes loved knowing a famous politician. Spencer helped my Uncle Jack get a liquor license for his restaurant and recommended my cousin for the Naval Academy. I’ve known him since I was a kid. After my parents divorced, he reached out to me…got me summer jobs, made sure I stayed on track for college. Once I came back to Palmyrton after law school, I started working on his campaigns.”
Cal gazes out the window to the lights of Palmyrton below. “At first it was just a game to me. I did it for the adrenaline rush of the competition.” He shakes his head. “But this campaign. This is different. This one matters.”
I pull myself into the corner of the sofa. I remember that night on our second date when he told me so smoothly, so effortlessly, how he met Spencer. And it was all untrue. “So why did you lie about that to me?”
“Why did you lie to me at first about taking your mother’s ring out of the trunk?”
I finger the ring protectively. “It was mine. I didn’t know how it got in your aunt’s trunk, but I knew that ring belonged to me.”
Cal sighs and continues. “When you discovered the trunk of jewelry, I knew immediately that Agnes must’ve stolen it. I told Spencer right away—I wanted his advice on how to handle it. That’s when he asked me not to mention his connection to Agnes—he didn’t want any hint of scandal during the campaign. It seemed like a harmless white lie.”
“But it wasn’t!” I hear an unfamiliar edge of hysteria in my own voice. “You kept lying to me, even after—” Even after you said you loved me.
Cal looks a little queasy. He knows better than to try to touch me right now. “Spencer told me today that he was stunned when you showed up wearing your mother’s ring. He had told Agnes years ago to get rid of it, but for some reason, she never did. But I didn’t know that, Audrey, you have to believe me. I thought Agnes stole your mother’s ring just as she stole the other jewelry.
“As I got to know you better, and saw how important it was to you to figure out what happened to your mother, I brought it up to Spencer again. Since he’d given Agnes references, I figured he must know whom she’d worked for. By that time, he’d met you and liked you. Spencer promised me that after the election, he’d dig through his files and help you find the other families Agnes worked for.” Cal e
xtends his hands, palms up. “I believed him.”
Cal’s explanation is making me more agitated, not less. I lean forward, searching his face for signs of distress and coming up empty. “But he lied to you too. He saw me wearing the ring, but didn’t explain to you what that meant. Doesn’t that bother you?”
Cal rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Audrey. This was intensely personal. He didn’t want to admit to me that he’d had an affair. He knew I looked up to him. He knew I loved Anne. He wanted the past to stay buried. Surely you can understand that?”
“What did he think was going to happen after the election? Sooner or later I would have figured it out.”
“Politics is a game that’s played minute-by-minute, baby. As soon as you map out a strategy, you can be sure it’ll be upended by events you can’t control.”
Cal stands before me in his gray flannel slacks and crisp oxford shirt, but I see Cal the runner, winning the race by putting his head down and focusing on the stretch of road directly beneath his feet. He honestly doesn’t see a problem with this approach. “I’m sorry—I just can’t believe that Spencer thought this deception was a viable option.”
“I’m sure he figured he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.”
I jump up. “Welcome to the middle of the freakin’ bridge, Cal!”
Cal steps towards me, takes my shoulders in his hands. His eyes are shining, locked on mine with such intensity that I feel I couldn’t look away if I tried. “Spencer has spent every day since the night your mother died trying to atone for what he did. Everything he’s fought for as a state representative, as a senator…everything he hopes to do as governor has been because of that terrible night. He can’t bring Charlotte back, but if he can do some good in this world—enact education reforms so that poor kids in Newark have the same opportunities as rich kids in Mountain Lakes, restructure our tax system so that everyone pays a fair share—”
“Oh, please Cal! Spare me the damn stump speech. You’re not the guest speaker at some rubber chicken dinner. This is my life we’re talking about here.”
Cal pulls me down next to him on the sofa. “That’s just it, Audrey. It’s not only your life. This is bigger than one person’s needs and desires. This is about the future of our state. Of this country.”
I narrow my eyes. “Spencer wants to run for president?”
“In four years he’ll be sixty-nine. It’s then or never.” Cal grabs my hands. “Spencer would make the ideal Democratic candidate. Socially liberal, fiscally moderate. Smarter and more experienced than anyone else on the horizon. Why should some indiscretion that happened thirty years ago derail that?”
I yank my hands away. “Indiscretion?” Cal’s capacity for understatement blows me away.
“Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, even Martin Luther King—they all had affairs, but they led their country, they changed the world for the better.” Cal’s face is lit up like a Times Square billboard. “Yes, they were flawed, but they were still great men.”
“Flawed? Flawed? My mother was murdered and Spencer helped dispose of the body. And let’s not forget that his wife tried to kill me. We’re not talking personality quirks here.”
Cal takes a deep breath. “Spencer wants you to know how truly sorry he is for all that’s happened. Anne….well, Anne wasn’t in her right mind, you’ve got to see that. The cancer, the pain, the drugs she was on—she just wasn’t herself.”
“I was there with her, Cal. She was very much herself. Her smart, commanding, determined Anne Finneran self. She wanted to kill me. And I’m beginning to think it wasn’t just to protect Dylan. How much did Anne know about the ring and the trunk?”
A furrow of confusion appears on Cal’s forehead. “Anne? Anne never knew about the ring. I told you, Spencer was trying to shield her from the affair.”
“Are you positive, Cal? Spencer relied on Anne’s advice for everything. Why not this?”
Cal shakes himself the way Ethel does when a pesky fly lands on her head. “Anne knew nothing about the ring. What happened during the fire….she didn’t mean to do it.”
Didn’t mean to do it? That’s what you say when your baseball breaks a neighbor’s window, not when you try to pin someone down in a burning building. I’m stunned into silence.
Cal’s face is so close to mine I can smell his spearminty breath. He cradles my cheeks in his hands. “Baby, you must see that no good can come from revealing all this to the media. Anne did so much good in her life. Spencer has so much still to offer the world. It would be best if we kept the affair and the circumstances of the fire within the family.” He kisses me. “Do it for me.”
I jerk away as if I’ve been slapped. The sound of my own breathing roars in my ears. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That’s it. Of course it is. Coughlin warned me that all Cal’s loyalties lay with Spencer. I should have listened.
“Spencer assigned you to keep an eye on me and bring me into the Finneran fold, didn’t he?” My voice ascends the scale. “The romantic dinners, the flowers, the sex—all in a day’s work for you, wasn’t it?”
Cal reaches for me. “No, it wasn’t like that!”
But his protest comes a split second too late. I see the shadow of guilt pass over his face. I’ve nailed it. Deep in my heart I’ve always known the truth—a man like Cal would never be interested in me.
I spring up just as my phone starts to trill. If it’s another reporter, this time I’m taking the call. I lift the phone to my ear. In one swift lunge, Cal grabs my phone and hurls it across the room. It crashes against a wall and breaks apart. He latches onto my arm and jerks me around to face him. Any pretense of affection has dissolved. I see a fierce passion there that has nothing to do with me. “Grow up, Audrey. You think you were the only person in the world with an unhappy childhood? That everyone’s family was perfect except yours? My father dumped my mother for a woman ten years older than me. Anne’s mother had a nervous breakdown, Spencer’s father was an unemployed drunk. Shit happens. Get over it.”
I break free and run for the powder room, slamming the door in Cal’s face and locking it.
He pounds hard enough to make the wood vibrate. “Audrey, come out of there. We’re not done.”
Oh, but we are. We’re so done.
Soon he stops hammering. A minute passes and his voice softens. “Baby, I’m sorry. I overreacted. It’s true that Spencer asked me to…get to know you. But Audrey, that was just at the beginning. I really did fall for you. Let’s talk, baby—we can work this out.”
“Shut up! I’ll come out of here when I’m good and damn ready. And stop calling me baby.” I sit on the edge of the toilet and run my fingers through my hair. Hunched and trembling, too numb to cry, I pick up each betrayal and caress it, admiring the artistry that went into its creation. I’m outclassed here—a Play-Doh sculptor at the Louvre.
I get up and walk to the polished marble sink. Trying not to look at myself in the mirror, I splash cold water on my face. My breaths come in short, hard bursts. I have to get more oxygen to my brain. I can’t think.
I can’t trust Cal, that much is obvious. His belief in Spencer goes way past loyalty. It’s more like a fundamentalist religion that causes its followers to speak in tongues. Cal has given me lots of information, but how can I tease out what’s true and what’s false?
My mind makes a sudden leap back to my college days, tutoring non-math majors in calculus. One girl used to hyperventilate every time she saw the sea of numbers and letters and symbols staring up at her from her text book. The answer is right in there, I would tell her. Relax and you’ll see it.
That should work here, but it doesn’t. Because a calculus textbook isn’t filled with false information masquerading as fact. I could solve this equation any number of ways, but I still won’t be sure I have the right answer. Garbage in, garbage out as the computer science majors used to say.
Reason, Audrey. Start with what you know is true. No doubt Spencer dumped my mother’
s body, kept her ring, and gave it to Agnes to keep. There can be no other explanation for how it came to be in that trunk. But what about the letter? Cal and I argued before he even attempted to explain that. Why would Spencer have taken the letter? And why leave it with Agnes? A letter to another man is hardly a sentimental memento.
Another thing is certain. I blew off Brian Bascomb and my father too soon. I’m ashamed by how unquestioningly I accepted Cal’s explanation that my father killed my mother. Maybe he did…but isn’t it just as plausible that Spencer killed her? I need to hear his version of events, if he’s able, or willing, to tell me. Has he regained consciousness? It’s too late to visit the hospital now, but I can call when I get home.
I lean against the cool tile wall and close my eyes. I want nothing more than to be held. Instead, I have to go out there and face Cal. I have to face that I’m totally alone. I will not cry. I will not.
Opening the bathroom door, I poke my head into the hall. The apartment is dark and silent; could Cal have gone out?
I slip toward the front door. I want out of here, away from the Finnerans and everyone connected to them. Their house, their family, their life was a sham. I’m ashamed for ever being attracted to it.
“You were in there for a long time.” The voice--calm, quiet--floats to me in the darkness.
My heart pounds. “I was thinking.”
Neither of us speaks. We don’t need to. Despite all the deception, we have built a bond, we two, over this past month. He knows that to me, empirical truth is paramount. I know that to him, everything is relative. It hardly matters who actually snuffed out my mother’s last breath. The result is the same: the end of Spencer’s career.
“The world is not black and white, Audrey.” Cal’s disembodied voice, low and even, caresses me like warm seawater. “Your mother’s dead; Anne’s dead—nothing’s going to change that. Your father and Spencer did what they had to do to protect the people they loved. What good can come of telling the media this old story? More people will be hurt. And none of it will bring your mother back.”
Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) Page 30