by Nancy Martin
Together, we walked across the parking lot under a sputtering streetlight and went inside. The diner was empty at that hour of the morning, except for a ponytailed waitress who sat at the counter reading a tabloid newspaper and drinking an iced tea. She waved us into a booth with red vinyl seat cushions, and we looked at the menu, printed on the place mats.
I ordered a white omelet with mushrooms and whole wheat toast, then excused myself. In the bathroom, I washed as best I could and reapplied some moisturizer and lip gloss. My Furstenberg dress hadn’t wrinkled, despite half a night spent curled up in the backseat of a car.
The perfect dress for a kidnapping.
When I returned to the table, Tierney looked surprised. “You didn’t climb out a window and call the cops.”
“Not without breakfast.” I slid into the seat opposite him. Two cups of coffee had already arrived, and I reached eagerly for mine.
As I swallowed the first scalding sip, a wan streak of pink daylight glowed across the parking lot. Pink sky in the morning, sailor take warning.
I said, “You must have gone to college at Princeton.”
Tierney nodded and stirred sweetener into his cup.
“What was your major?”
“Girls. You can tell your father for me.”
Our father, I almost said. Sitting there, looking across the table at Tierney, I could see a certain Indiana Jones quality that must have made the coeds hot.
He said, “I’ve been thinking about what happened at the Paine office. Trying to remember everything I saw.”
I sipped a little more hot coffee and lifted my eyebrows.
He said, “You mentioned there was a kid—an actor, right?”
“He’s not a kid, exactly. Not very tall, but with big shoulders, long arms. He was wearing a baseball cap. Chad Zanzibar.”
“Wearing shorts? The kind that are falling off his butt? Does he dye his hair, maybe?”
I nodded. “Highlights. Did you see him?”
“Yeah. He was on his cell phone in the reception area when I arrived. I heard him talking to someone—really reading the riot act. About needing money for a production.”
“Yes, I think he and his grandmother are producers of a new movie.”
“He needed sixteen million dollars. He said so, very loudly, several times.”
“He thought he could get that kind of money from his grandmother. But now she’s broke. Last night, she asked me about selling her jewelry. Which, in case your college studies skipped this chapter, is something women don’t do unless they’re desperate.”
“Does that give the kid a motive to kill Hoyt?”
I set down my cup. “You don’t call him your father, I notice. Not ‘Dad’ or ‘Pop’ or anything but his first name. Has that been a lifelong thing? Or just since learning he wasn’t really the man who—”
“I always called him Hoyt. It was easier that way.” Tierney drank more coffee. “I don’t remember exactly when the Zanzibar kid left the Paine Building. But it was definitely after Hoyt went off the balcony.”
Our breakfasts arrived on platters as big as bicycle tires. Tierney’s plate overflowed with eggs, peppers, fried potatoes and four slices of rye toast.
As he looked at his breakfast, he pulled my cell phone out of his pocket and pushed it across the table to me.
We ate, and I thought about the ordinariness of meals with my sisters. How strange it was to be sitting here having breakfast with my brother. My new brother. It was a new day, all right.
But Tierney soon lost interest in his breakfast. He sat back, staring at his plate and toying with his fork.
I said, “Why did you come to Blackbird Farm yesterday? Surely not for the purpose of kidnapping me.”
Silent, he shook his head. But I could see him wrestling with his thoughts.
“Then, what? To meet Daddy? Your real father?”
“No.” He set aside his fork and looked at me squarely. “Because I thought he killed Hoyt.”
“You thought Daddy might have pushed Hoyt off the balcony? No, that’s not possible.”
He lifted his shoulders. “It’s what I assumed. I overheard one of the Treasury agents say he was in the office. And once I knew that, I figured he was the one with a real reason to kill Hoyt.”
“What reason? Daddy had no—”
“Because of me,” Tierney said.
“But wouldn’t it be the other way around? That Hoyt resented my father for having the affair with your mother?”
Tierney shook his head. “That wasn’t how it happened, Nora. At least, that’s not what I have been led to understand most of my life. Hoyt made an agreement with your father.”
“An agreement?”
“To help my mother conceive.”
I tried to comprehend what he was saying. “You mean, Hoyt wasn’t…capable?”
Tierney gave a short, bitter laugh. “No, Hoyt wasn’t capable of making babies. But he agreed that my mother should be allowed to have a child, so he approached your father—his friend—to help. It started out very civilized.”
I considered the kind of favor my father had given his friend, and wondered fleetingly—unfairly, perhaps—if he’d had an ulterior motive. I banished that thought as quickly as it came, trying hard to give him the benefit of my doubt. “But…how does that give Daddy a reason to kill Hoyt now? If they all agreed to—”
“The original agreement was drawn up and signed by all three of them. To guarantee your father would say nothing and make no effort to contact me, Hoyt and my mother put five hundred thousand dollars into an investment account. Your father was supposed to stay out of my life until I turned thirty. At that time, he was allowed to collect his reward. Actually, we were supposed to split it.”
My stomach began to roil as I thought of previous occasions when Daddy had access to large sums of money. “How old are you now?”
“Twenty-nine. Unfortunately, over the weekend I learned that Hoyt had raided that account some years ago. There’s nothing left.”
“I’m sorry.”
Grimly, he said, “Me, too. Amazon Chocolate could really use some cash right now. I came to Philadelphia hoping to get my hands on that money early. I have a lot of people depending on me. I hate disappointing them. And, to tell the truth, I’ve got a little problem to fix with some nasty guys back in South America.”
“How nasty?”
“Are you familiar with the term crime lord?”
“Intimately.” I sighed. “You owe them money?”
“Yes. It’s a natural part of the system there. A little bribery goes a long way. But if I miss a payment…”
“I understand. How does all this make Daddy a murder suspect?”
Tierney looked directly into my eyes. “Maybe I’m being presumptuous, but I’d like to think he was angry at Hoyt for stealing my inheritance.”
“I—well, that would be very noble.” I shook my head. “But I’m sorry to say, it’s hardly in character for my father. I have to be truthful with you. If anything, Daddy’s probably wishing he could have gotten his hands on the money himself.”
In a nutshell, I told Tierney about my parents and their flight into financial freedom at the expense of my sisters and me, not to mention many of their good friends who were suckered into lending money they’d never see again. I tried to make my voice sound light, to make a joke of it all, but by watching his face—full of curiosity, but pained compassion, too—I knew I failed to make my parents sound like anything more than what they truly were.
“So you see,” I said, “a gallant act on your behalf isn’t likely. I’m afraid Daddy is the kind of man who’d swindle a dime from a nun, if he thought he could get away with it.”
Tierney said, “I guess nobody’s who we’d like to think they are.”
He curled his fingers around the handle of his cup and looked into his coffee. A cloud of melancholy engulfed him as clearly as if a fog had rolled off a river.
“Tierney? Is there more
I should know?”
He sighed and turned away from me to stare out the window. “There’s a lot more. And soon enough, the whole world’s going to hear it. I guess I knew it would happen someday, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I don’t understand why the police haven’t told the press yet.”
“About what?”
“About Hoyt. He wasn’t at all what everybody thought.”
“Yes. We assumed he was a generous philanthropist. But because he’s been embezzling from clients, I’m afraid his generosity won’t—”
“That’s not it.” Suddenly Tierney’s eyes looked glassy, and I realized he was fighting back tears. He covered his face with one hand to hide his emotion.
I reached across the table to touch his arm. “What is it? Can I help?”
He shook his head. Choking, he said, “Hoyt wasn’t a man.”
My heart went out to Tierney. “Just because he couldn’t father a child doesn’t make him less of a—”
“No, no, I mean he wasn’t a man. He was my father—at least he pretended to be. But he wasn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Can I say it any plainer?” Tierney looked at me again. “Hoyt was a woman.”
Baffled, I sat back in the vinyl seat cushion. “He what?”
“He pretended his whole life. Surely you noticed his small size? His voice?”
“But—”
“He was a woman. He dressed as a man, acted like a man, chose to live his life as a man. But he wasn’t. I don’t understand the relationship he had with my mother—that was way too screwed up for me to ask about. All I know is that I discovered it when I was a teenager.” Words tumbling together, Tierney said, “I walked in on him—it was an accident. And I saw. He wasn’t a man at all. He had breasts, and he was wrapping them tightly with—look, it doesn’t matter. I ran out of the bathroom. Out of the house.”
My head spun with the truth of what he was telling me. If Hoyt wasn’t a man at all, what did that do to the investigation of his murder? Suddenly a whole applecart had been upended.
Tierney went on, his voice rough. “Funny thing is, I think I knew long before I saw it for myself. How did I sense it? I don’t know.”
I knew what he meant. I’d felt something was off about Hoyt, too, but hadn’t been able to put a name to my feeling.
“Finding out the truth,” he said, “really messed me up for a while. They tried talking to me about it, but I was hysterical, completely out of control. They took me to a doctor—a psychiatrist—but I clammed up. I wouldn’t speak to anybody. Then they sent me away to boarding school, and it was better there. I didn’t go home for a couple of years. I went with friends on vacations and holidays, just so I wouldn’t have to face my parents. That’s when I started traveling in South America. It was a place nobody knew me, and I really love the people there. Nobody has any pretenses. When my mother died, I came back for a few weeks, but I—I didn’t talk to Hoyt. I couldn’t.”
I tried to imagine how a young boy dealt with such a bizarre family story. “You never reconciled with your parents?”
“No. How could I? A month ago, Hoyt contacted me through my business. He wanted me to come home. He said he had something important to discuss. It took me three weeks to agree, but I—even now I’m not ready to forgive him.”
“What did he want to discuss?”
“I don’t know. But I didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. Not only had my parents fed me a gigantic lie all my life, but he—Hoyt—was the only father I knew. The man I imprinted on, the man who taught me how to take a piss standing up, for crying out loud—I trusted him to—to be a man. A real man.”
“Have you been able to talk about this with anyone?” A therapist, I wanted to add.
His face had taken on a hard red flush. “Until today, I’ve never told another person.”
I winced. “And soon the whole world is going to know.”
Tierney nodded miserably. “I don’t know why the police haven’t revealed it yet. Surely the medical examiner took one look and knew the whole story.”
“The police probably wouldn’t reveal his sex until they pieced together more of the truth.”
“Which is one reason they’re looking for me now.”
“And you’ve given them another reason,” I said.
“Right. Waving a gun at your family. Kidnapping you.”
“I’m sorry you felt you had to go to such extremes.”
Unhappily, he ran his hand through his hair. “Things were better for me in South America. I can be myself there. I’m my own man, have a business I’m passionate about. But here—I’m some kind of freak.”
“That’s not true. It’s not your fault.”
My words didn’t comfort him in the least. Tierney tried to sip from his cup of coffee, but he couldn’t manage to swallow. We sat together, letting the truth sink in.
I could hardly accept it. Hoyt Cavendish—a woman in disguise? Did that mean he was transgender? A cross-dresser? I wasn’t sure of the label. That time I’d seen him onstage, giving the violin to the young musician—I tried to envision the scene again, knowing what I knew now. It seemed impossible.
And yet. His diminutive size. His strangely weak voice. His hands.
Murusha and Donaldson, I remembered. The gynecologists who specialized in female cancers.
I had an inkling now why Hoyt had summoned Tierney home.
Suddenly my cell phone rang, skittering on the tabletop between us.
Without asking Tierney’s permission to answer, I opened the phone.
In my ear, Michael’s voice was an urgent growl. “Does he still have the gun?”
“What? No.”
Michael hung up. A bubble of tension popped in my chest.
Tierney looked at me, no doubt puzzled by my expression. “Who was that?”
I glanced out into the parking lot, and leaning against Tierney’s black car was a familiar figure. Delmar, with his arms folded across his enormous chest. I recognized him as the sunrise glinted off the dent in his bald head.
I said, “Oh, dear.”
Like a tiger, Michael pounced into the booth beside Tierney, crowding him against the window and upsetting his cup of coffee. Instinctively, Tierney reached to dam the flow of hot coffee, but Michael pinned Tierney’s right wrist against the red vinyl. He put his own arm across the back of the seat cushion behind Tierney’s head. To the watching waitress, it probably looked like a friendly greeting. To me, it looked as if Michael was going to snap Tierney’s vertebrae with one hand.
Every iota of color drained out of Tierney’s face.
To me, Michael snapped, “You okay?”
“Yes, of course—”
Unnerved by the stealth attack, Tierney tried to bluff. “Who the hell are you?”
And I said, “How in heaven’s name did you find us?”
By that time, Tierney fully comprehended how big and frightening Michael could be when he was angry. Weakly, he said, “Take it easy, man.”
“Shut up,” Michael said. “Before I break your pencil neck.”
“Michael, please. There’s no need to get physical.”
“Oh, no? This idiot kidnaps you at gunpoint? And now you’re best friends?”
“I’m fine. See? Perfectly healthy.”
“You sure?” He glared at me, his grip still unbreakable on Tierney.
“Yes, I’m sure.” I felt a surge of sympathy. “You’ve been through an awful night, haven’t you? I’m sorry. I’m truly—wait, how did you find us?”
Plausibly enough, he said, “I talked to Rawlins.”
But I saw a shift in his eyes. “Rawlins had no idea where I was until an hour ago. And now I’m here. And so are you. Do you have a bloodhound? Or—good grief, did you put some kind of tracking device in my pocket?”
“Don’t get mad,” he said.
“You did!”
“It was only a precaution.”
“My phone?” I guessed,
snatching it up from the table.
“It’s a GPS option,” Michael admitted.
“My phone tells you where I am?” I stared at the little blue screen as if it were suddenly capable of transmitting a flesh-eating virus.
“Good thing Henry installed it yesterday,” he said. “You could be dead in a ditch if we hadn’t tracked you here.”
“You could have found me and I’d still be dead,” I said. “Is it legal to do this?”
The waitress came over with a rag. She mopped up the coffee and righted Tierney’s cup in its saucer. She appeared not to notice Michael’s seemingly affectionate grip on the back of Tierney’s neck. “Some coffee for you, sir? Breakfast?”
“He’ll have mine.” I pushed my plate across the table, no longer hungry. “But bring him some decaf. He has the jitters.”
“I do not,” Michael said amiably, releasing Tierney’s neck when the waitress walked away. He slid over to make the requisite twelve inches of space between himself and another man, thereby declaring himself off duty. “Who’s the asshole?”
“He’s not an—Tierney, this is Michael Abruzzo. Michael, this is Tierney Cavendish. My brother.”
Maybe Michael’s years in prison made him invulnerable to surprise. He didn’t blink. He shook Tierney’s hand slowly, though, and studied his face.
Wary, Tierney said, “Man, you scared the hell out of me.”
“Good,” said Michael. “You hurt her, I’ll hurt you harder.”
I handed Michael my fork. “Have some breakfast. You’ll feel better.”
He ate a few bites of my omelet, but stayed half-turned sideways in the seat so he could examine Tierney between swallows. I nibbled the whole wheat toast until the waitress came back, holding the handles of two coffeepots in one hand—one decaf, one regular. She put some packets of jam on the table. Ten or twelve more customers had come into the diner. Someone turned on the television behind the counter. An early newscast came on, predicting more hot weather. The place felt almost homey. Someone called the waitress by name and she went to another table.