To the Grave

by Carlene Thompson

  “Of course,” Ian replied. “You’ve known all along that’s what everything has been about—everything.”

  “Everything?” Lawrence seemed bewildered. “Not just her murder?” Ian looked at him steadily. “Oh my God, you mean the other murders, too!”

  “Yes. Don’t pretend you didn’t know they had a connection to Renée Eastman’s murder.”

  “Well … well yes. Most people think so. Someone tried to kill her husband—”

  “Her ex-husband.”

  “Okay, her ex-husband. It’s been a helluva week for Aurora Falls. All this murder, mayhem…” Lawrence’s concentration seemed to wander for a few moments. Then he snapped back. “But what does Renée Eastman have to do with any of us, Ian?”

  “She was the woman I loved more than life itself,” Ian said flatly. “And one of you murdered her.”

  Silence grew in the room until Catherine had a wild impulse to simply scream at the horrible, unbelievable scene unfolding in front of her. Was she having a dream? No, a nightmare. She must be having a nightmare and any second she’d wake up, heart pounding, breath heaving, but slowly realizing she was back to her blessedly ordinary reality.

  Then Lawrence and Ian spoke again, and she knew, unfortunately, this was no simple nightmare. “Are you out of your mind? You didn’t even know her.”

  “We were lovers, Father. Renée Moreau was my lover, my love, since I was seventeen.”

  It’s not true! a small, childish voice within Catherine cried. But a louder, more reasonable voice told her Ian was not lying. Renée taking a young, impressionable boy—an intelligent, sensitive, beautiful-souled boy who would see her as so much more than she really was—as a lover made perfect sense. He would have been what her own starving spirit wanted, craved, had no scruples about taking for her own needs, never considering what harm she might be inflicting on him.

  “Seventeen! That whore took advantage of you when you were seventeen?” Lawrence burst out, making a clumsy effort to leap to his feet.

  Ian stepped closer to his father, the gun pointed at his face. “Don’t call her a whore.”

  “She was a whore! You’re lying. You couldn’t have let her put a hand on you, that bitch, that—”

  As Lawrence made another unsteady, enraged step closer to Ian, Ian came to within inches of his father’s eyes, holding up the gun. “Sit down, Father, or I will shoot you right now.”

  The soft voice of Ian had turned to iron. He looked taller, stronger. And not quite sane. Fear rushed through Catherine like a fierce stream, and before she knew she was going to say a word she remarked, “Ian, no one is going to say anything else bad about Renée. This is my office and I will not allow it. Lawrence, sit down and shut your mouth for once. Ian, please tell us about you and Renée.” Lawrence threw her a fierce look. Then, as if his legs had simply given way, he sank back on the couch. “Please, Ian, go ahead. I will not allow him to interrupt you.”

  Ian looked at her warily for a moment. Then, when neither she nor his father moved or said a word, Ian seemed to relax slightly.

  “You didn’t know Renée, Catherine.”

  “No, I didn’t. I only met her at her wedding.” She had to swallow before she could force out the next words in a calm voice. “Please tell me about her. How did you meet?”

  “You might have killed her. Do you care?”

  “Yes, Ian, I care,” Catherine said solemnly. Denying that she might have killed Renée would be useless.

  Ian looked around the room for a moment, as if considering whether or not to answer Catherine. Then he began to speak slowly. “I went to private school, away from Aurora Falls. It was summer, though, and I was home. I was restless, I had no friends here, so I decided to take an art course taught by some guy I’d heard was good—Nicolai Arcos. “Renée took the course, too. I was so shy. I didn’t talk to anyone. But she introduced herself to me. She said it was her first summer in Aurora Falls and she didn’t have any friends, either.

  “Of course, Arcos was quick to have conversations with her—she’d studied in Europe, which he said fascinated him,” Ian went on. “It was really her beauty that attracted him. I’m sure she realized that, but she didn’t let that put her off. Nor did she push me away in favor of the exotic artist. Instead, she seemed to pull us into a threesome. I felt I had two friends. I didn’t feel so alone anymore.”

  “You weren’t alone, Ian. You were home, with me,” Lawrence said.

  “With you? When? You left early in the morning and came home no earlier than nine at night, when you said you had some business to finish in your office. You devoted weekends mostly to business on Saturdays, or luncheons or golf games or tennis or racquetball with business associates.”

  “And you were invited to participate in all of those things.”

  “Me? I hate golf, in case you forgot. And I may appear to have made a full physical recovery from the car wreck, but I cannot play tennis or racquetball. But I guess you forgot that, too.”

  Lawrence opened his mouth as if to make an excuse, then closed it again. He had no excuse, Catherine thought, except that Ian was right. Lawrence had forgotten his own son could not participate in rigorous athletics.

  “So you, Arcos, and Renée became friends,” Catherine said.

  “In a way. It was like a play. Arcos wanted her. I loved her. Each knew how the other felt. Each pretended not to know.”

  “Did Renée know?”

  “Renée was very unhappy and confused,” Ian said brusquely. “I don’t think she knew exactly how Arcos and I felt. Maybe she had a hint. Maybe not.”

  Like hell, Catherine thought. She knew exactly how the men felt. She enjoyed the attention, the competition for her affection.

  “And then one day we began talking about how soon I’d have to go back to school. Renée started to cry.” Ian went quiet, his gaze growing hazy, his expression a mixture of sadness and wonder. “That’s the first day she took me to the cottage.”

  Catherine expected an outburst from Lawrence, but none came. He simply sat, looking almost deflated, on the couch, his hands folded.

  “The two of you made love,” Catherine said.

  “Yes! Yes! We made love. She told me she loved me and I said the same. We were together, one, from that day on.”

  “I see.”

  “No, no, you don’t, because you’re thinking of her affair with Arcos!” Catherine looked at Ian in surprise. She had expected him to either deny it or not mention it. “When I went back to school, we kept in touch. She told me about their relationship. She said she didn’t want it to hurt me, because it meant nothing. She was just so unhappy.”

  “Oh, Ian, how could you even think—,” Lawrence began, but Catherine cut him short.

  “If Renée was so unhappy with James, why didn’t she go home to her parents?”

  Ian looked at Catherine in surprise. “Why, her father molested her, didn’t you guess? The only reason he wanted a child was so he could have sex with her, and he started when she was so young she can’t really remember.”

  “And the mother did nothing?”

  “Audrey, Renée’s mother, is a lot younger than the father. And she didn’t have any money. She and Gaston, Renée’s father, had an agreement. She got to be Mrs. Moreau if she had a child. He’d wait if she had a boy first. He’d wait until she had a girl. And then the girl was his. It was a trade-off. Audrey has always known.”

  So Renée had told Ian quite a bit, Catherine thought. How much of it was true, though? “Why did she marry James of all people?” Catherine asked. “It seems to me she would have chosen someone a bit wilder. And he wasn’t rich.”

  Ian gave Catherine an almost uncanny smile. “He found out things about Gaston. She wasn’t in love with him, but she knew if she married him, he could protect her from Gaston. That’s the only reason she married James Eastman. It’s the reason she stayed with him even though she couldn’t stand him. He could protect her from someone she feared more than anything—her
own father.”

  “And what were these things James knew?”

  “She’d never tell me. She said she was protecting me, too. Gaston might find out that I knew and if he did…”

  “If he did?”

  “He’d kill me.”

  Catherine stared at him. Renée had laid it on thick. Her story about James threatening Gaston was absurd, the stuff of movies and novels. Yet in spite of Ian’s intelligence, he’d been willing to believe anything Renée told him. It’s almost as if she bewitched him, Catherine thought with a giddy impulse to start giggling. She made a small choking sound to cover the nervous reaction, then looked seriously at Ian.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ian asked.

  “I swallowed wrong, that’s all.” Catherine cleared her throat again so he’d believe she’d genuinely gotten choked up and then asked, “What happened when you came home the next summer?”

  “I was finished with school. I wanted us to go away together, but she said no. She said I had to go to college—I’d planned on it since I was young. She wouldn’t take that chance away from me. We could wait, she said. We could wait a year or two, save money—neither of us had much of our own—and then we’d go away where neither Gaston nor James would find us.”

  “Gaston or James? What about your father? Didn’t she think he’d come looking for you?”

  “I knew he wouldn’t. He’d be mad as hell, but he wouldn’t take the time to look for me. He didn’t think that much of me anyway.”

  “That’s not true!” Lawrence burst out. “You’re my son! I love you!”

  “Actions do speak louder than words, Father. You’ve given me elaborate gifts and bragged on me to your friends, but you’ve never spent any more time with me than you had to, especially after the car accident. Was that because I didn’t act quite the way I did before?”

  “You did!”

  “I was physically injured, so I wasn’t as strong as other boys my age—the sons of your friends. I had to spend months in a bed.” Ian stopped for a moment, his mouth curling up in a snide grin. “And then there was that head injury. That’s what you told people. ‘Ian got a nasty bump on the head.’ Nasty bump on the head? I had a brain injury. For a while, the doctors thought I’d be permanently brain impaired. That’s what you really couldn’t stand, was it? That you might have a son who wasn’t mentally normal?”

  Lawrence flinched and Catherine knew it was true. Any parent would have been distraught over the seriousness of Ian’s injuries, but it was the assault on his brain that had worried Lawrence the most, and not for Ian’s sake. For Lawrence’s own pride. Hate flared through her for a moment and she almost said something vile, detestable, to Lawrence. Then she looked at him, sunken and pale on her couch, all of the old Lawrence Blakethorne bravado vanishing before her eyes, and she said nothing. She made herself look back at Ian.

  “Did you talk with Renée when you were in college?”

  “All the time. And she told me everything. I knew about Nordine and Arcos, but whenever I came home, it was like I’d never left.”

  “You were lovers again?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “But you still didn’t run away with her.”

  “We were still saving money—I wouldn’t come into my inheritance until Grandmother died—and Renée said she wanted me to have another year to make up my mind that being with her was what I really wanted.”

  “She knew that your grandmother was going to leave you all her money?” Lawrence asked suddenly.

  “Yes. I said we told each other everything. I know you think that’s what she wanted. You think everyone wants money more than anything, but she didn’t. She didn’t care about the inheritance. She only cared about me.”

  Catherine saw some color come back into Lawrence’s face. He was regaining a little strength. He was going to shout or even try to stand up again, maybe lunge at Ian.

  Quickly Catherine bent over and let out a little cry of pain. Both Ian and Lawrence looked at her as she began vigorously rubbing her right calf. “Just a muscle spasm. They happen when I’ve held still too long or I’m nervous. It’s nothing.” And it really was nothing. “I’m sorry, Ian.”

  “I know about muscle spasms.”

  “I should think so! You had plenty of them in rehab.”

  “Hundreds, it seemed.” Thank God he remembered, Catherine thought. “You always rubbed and rubbed until they began to ease or the doctor had to give me a shot of something to relax them.”

  “Yes. I remember. You had such a hard time in there for months.”

  “And I relied on you. Patrice came some, but she spent a lot of time with Grandmother or at work.” He looked furiously at Lawrence. “And you hardly ever visited.”

  Catherine stayed in her bent position, rubbing her leg and glancing at her watch. Eight fifty-five. She’d been here for less than half an hour. It felt like she’d sat in this chair, listening to Ian, for a day.

  “Is your leg better?” Ian asked in a concerned voice.

  “A little. You see … I had a hard fall last year on my right hip. I didn’t break it or anything, but it’s caused problems with my leg ever since then.”

  Ian looked as if he was thinking things over. Then she saw decision in his eyes. “Stand up. Slowly flex your leg. That’s how it’s done. I remember. I don’t want to see you in pain.”

  You don’t want to see me in pain, but you’re waving a gun in my face, Catherine thought. Ludicrous. But a chance was a chance.

  “Well, okay.” Catherine stood up slowly, wincing a bit as she leaned toward the right. “Oh, maybe this is a worse one than I thought.”

  “Keep rubbing it,” Ian ordered. “You know how muscle spasms are. You remember how mine were.”

  “I felt so sorry for you. I wished I had magic fingers that could massage away the pain. Then I’d have to admit defeat and call a doctor for an injection of muscle relaxer. You were afraid of needles.”

  “I wasn’t afraid of them. I just hated them.”

  She took a small, staggering step to the right, then caught herself on the corner of the desk. “I’m all right. I just need to stand and flex it.” Catherine flexed gently. “But about Renée—something changed between the two of you,” she went on. “She left not long after you went back to the university for what would have been your—let’s see—junior year. What changed?”

  “Nothing! Not in our hearts. But after all Renée had been through in her life before Aurora Falls, after she’d come here and spent years with James, with Arcos and Nordine fighting over her when all she really wanted was me, she said she just couldn’t take it anymore. She said she was leaving town. I begged her to come to me, but she said she wouldn’t put me in danger.” She was trying to escape you, too, Catherine thought in pity for the young, highly intelligent yet naïve Ian. “She said she would keep in touch. And she did. She didn’t abandon me. I always knew where she was and if she was safe.

  “Then she said things were getting shaky for her,” Ian continued. “I wasn’t certain what she meant. She began to sound frightened of what was going to become of her. She stopped telling me where she was. She didn’t come home in June when I did. You can’t imagine how frantic I was. And then, a month after the beginning of my senior year, my grandmother died. She left me a fortune. Well, maybe not what some people would call a fortune, but nearly twelve million dollars. There would be so much money, even after taxes, I could take Renée away and keep her safe. I was elated.”

  “But she didn’t know your grandmother had died,” Catherine said. Maybe it was hope or pure imagination, but she thought she’d caught a glance of a person through one of the windows in her office, someone who seemed to be walking slowly, carefully.

  “Yes, she did. She’d been keeping up with me all along because she loved me.” He smiled gently. “We talked about our plans. The will had to go through probate and that can take up to a year. I had an apartment at school, but she said she still didn’t feel safe and she
wouldn’t feel safe until we could go away together. I understood. She wouldn’t have been safe. My father started checking on me regularly.” Ian’s mouth pulled up slightly on one side, giving him a snide look. “I suddenly became more interesting when Grandmother had died and left me all that money. He always knew I was going to get it, but I believe he thought she might live another five or ten years.”

  “I finished my senior year; I came home; I acted as if I were going to invest all of the money in Blakethorne Charter. That made Father really happy, but it’s what he’d been expecting all year. Actually, it’s what he needed. I know more about business than he thinks I do. I secretly kept up with the books and I knew he’d overextended himself. What do you think all of this frenzied pursuit of a merger with Star Air has been about? Even all of my money wouldn’t have been enough to bail him out.”

  “Merging with Star is a good business move!” Lawrence thundered.

  “I agree. But I know you. You would much rather have kept Blakethorne all to yourself, not merged with another company. My inheritance could help, but it couldn’t save you. You had to have the resources of another company, even if it was one you hated as much as Star Air.”

  “I don’t need Star Air,” Lawrence thundered. “I’m giving Star Air the chance of a lifetime!”

  “Save it, Father. I told you—I know all about your finances. Not everyone at Blakethorne Charter is a fan of yours. Some of your employees hate you and they don’t have a lot of scruples about sharing information with your own son.”

  Lawrence made a low, grumbling sound, his fist clenching. He was furious, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to act. Shock, perhaps, Catherine thought. But fear? She didn’t think Lawrence was capable of a fear that would make him unable to act.

  “When did Renée come back to Aurora Falls?” Catherine asked.

  “I told you we kept in touch. All the legalities concerning Grandmother’s will were finished in early September. Father expected me immediately to sink the money into Blakethorne, but I kept stalling. I was waiting for Renée. We texted and called, and set up a meeting for Saturday night, the first week of October at nine o’clock in the cottage. We still thought of the cottage as our place. My father was putting more and more pressure on me about giving him the money. He seemed to be getting suspicious, and every hour felt like a day to me until I’d meet up with Renée and get away from him. I’d withdrawn a lot of my money and getting the rest of it wouldn’t be a problem for a long time. I figured that by then my father would have had a stroke or killed himself because of all his debt and not be able to give me any more trouble.”