The Inheritance

by Savage, Tom

  As for John and his wife, well, who knew? Upstairs in their rooms, or out somewhere. They occasionally went out for the evening. New York City wasn’t far, and there were clubs in Greenwich. There was even that charming little movie theater on Main Street in Randall.

  Where is everybody? she wondered.

  She briefly considered calling the gatehouse, asking for Kevin. But he, too, would probably be asleep. She would only be waking up the entire family. Mrs. Jessel and her husband, who was unwell, and the sister, Dora. No, she couldn’t call Kevin, much as she wished she could.

  Mary Smith. She thought of this, even going so far as to glance at her watch. It was three hours earlier in Indio. Mary and Ben would be in the living room, watching television. She could call them, hear Mary’s voice. The voice of the only woman she would ever accept as her mother.

  No. She could not call Indio. Ben and Mary loved her, she knew that. But they were not a part of this. She would not allow herself to involve them in it.

  She was alone.

  Then, as she had done too often all her life, Holly accepted it. She was alone here, on the ground floor of Randall House, and there was nothing she could do about it. Not tonight, anyway.

  Tomorrow …

  She stood uncertainly at the bottom of the stairs, gazing distractedly up at the huge green tree beside it. The tree would be decorated sometime soon, she knew, in preparation for the party. Her birthday party. Four nights from now, on Christmas Eve, her birthday, this hall would be ablaze with light and filled with people.

  But now, tonight, she was alone.

  Yet not alone. There was no one here with her, but she was aware of them, all of them. The images from her recurring dream came back to her, the dream she’d been having ever since she’d arrived here five weeks ago. She was naked in the town square, and they were watching her. And here, now, alone in the Great Hall, she could feel the eyes.

  Then, as if drawn to it, as if it were inevitable, she went slowly back upstairs to her bedroom, aware with every step of the watchers. That constant, invisible audience with their silent gaze.

  When she was safely back in her room, she locked her door. Then she undressed, picked up the scrapbook from the table, and got into bed.

  Tomorrow, she thought, opening the scrapbook. Tomorrow I must find a phone number. I must call and make an appointment for as soon as possible.

  As soon as possible …

  She sat up in the bed long into the night, reading slowly through the scrapbook again and again, burning the words and the images into her mind.

  Alec Buono, actually Alessandro Buonaventura, sometimes known as Ed, was watching Holly. From his position in the drive at the edge of the trees near the stable, he could just see her head through the partially opened curtains of the extreme right, second-floor bedroom. He’d been watching her for a while, and he could see her better now that the snow had finally stopped falling. He adjusted his powerful binoculars. She was sitting up in bed, reading.

  He wondered what she was reading. It was warm in her room, in her bed. Shaking snow from his coat, he thought about being there with her. If I were there with her, he thought, smiling to himself in the darkness, she sure as hell wouldn’t need that book, whatever it is.…

  Oh, well, to work. He lowered the glasses until they were hanging comfortably from the strap around his neck and crept silently down the drive past the stable, to the garage. With a quick glance over at the dark gatehouse, he slipped into the garage through the little side door. He closed the door carefully behind him before pulling the flashlight from his coat pocket and switching it on.

  He made his way slowly down the row of cars to the blue BMW. This was the car John Randall had told him about, the one she drove. He shone the light up and down the length of the back wall of the building until he saw the shelves. Three wooden shelves, about two feet in length, attached to the wall, one above another. Yes, just as Randall had described them. He went over to the wall and felt along the right side of the middle shelf until he found the little latch. The entire shelf unit swung outward, revealing the row of keys hanging on pegs. The third one from the left was labeled BMW.

  He unlocked the driver’s door of the car, reached in toward the dashboard, and popped the hood. There was a loud click when he did this, and he froze for a moment, holding his breath. When he was certain there was no sound from outside, he went around to the front of the car.

  He’d never seen the engine of a BMW before, and he was relieved to see that it was similar to most other engines. He followed the brake line with the beam of the flashlight, nodding to himself. Yes, a slow drainage. She’ll lose the brakes somewhere on the highway. He’d used this method twice before, both times successfully. One of them had caused quite a pileup on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The final body count was seven, he recalled, but one of the bodies had been his mark, a croupier from Atlantic City who’d been pocketing profits.

  He wondered what the body count would be this time. It didn’t make a bit of difference to him, as long as one of them was Holly Randall.

  He closed the hood, returned the key to its peg, and shut the concealed cabinet behind the shelves. In seconds he was out the door and moving quietly through the trees to the outer wall of the estate, fifty yards behind the garage and stable. He leaped up and pulled himself over the high stone wall, dropping into the adjacent property, the abandoned farm, just a few yards from the dirt lane where his car was parked.

  Mission accomplished. Well, dry run accomplished, he amended as he walked down the snow-covered lane toward his car. This was his last visit before the actual mission. Now that he’d decided on the means, there was no need for any more weekly reconnaissance visits. It was five days to Christmas. A week after the new year, John Randall and his wife were off to Europe. One week after that, he, Alec, would return.

  Sometime soon after that, he knew, Holly Randall would get into that car, either as driver or passenger. The BMW was only used for her, John had assured him. If the chauffeur—or boyfriend, or whatever he was—was driving, well, so be it. The result would be the same.

  But she had definitely looked warm and cozy in that bed, he thought as he got into the red Infiniti and started the engine. Shrugging off the thought, he turned the car around in the lane and drove toward the main road. He was on the road, headed toward town, before he switched on the headlights.

  It was nearly midnight. He passed no one on the road, and the village of Randall was definitely in bed for the night, the only lights coming from street lamps and the Christmas decorations that festooned various houses and the trees in the park in the central square. Even the little police station was bedecked with flashing red and green lights. The only person he saw in the town was a big blond man in a heavy overcoat leaning against one of the sedans in front of the station house, smoking a cigarette. The big man looked up and nodded to him as he drove by. He nodded back. Then the town disappeared behind him and he was turning onto the highway.

  The Kismet Motel was about three miles down the highway toward Greenwich. He’d checked in and had dinner there before driving out to Randall House. He’d stay the night and meet John Randall at the appointed time, ten o’clock tomorrow morning, in the lane beside Randall House. He enjoyed staying at the Kismet. It was set far back from the highway in the Connecticut countryside, which was a hell of a lot more quiet than Flatbush Avenue, where he lived in a two-room rental above a very popular Hispanic nightclub. His ex had gotten the house, damn her.…

  He drove into the motel’s lot and parked in front of his room, which was at the end of the long row farthest from the office and the bar-restaurant in the center of the strip. He paused on the little sidewalk in front of his room, looking toward the restaurant, debating. The lights were still on down there. Did he want a couple of beers before retiring?

  He decided against it, remembering the grumpy bartender in the usually empty room where he’d eaten earlier. There were only two other cars parked along
the row of rooms, on the other side of the office from him. A real jumping place, he thought. Besides, he was tired. He yawned as he pulled his room key from his coat pocket and went inside.

  He was just stepping out of his pants three minutes later when he heard a soft knocking on his door. He froze for a moment, then reached automatically for the gun in the holster he’d placed on the night table.

  “Yeah?” he barked.

  “Phone message, sir. It came while you were out.”

  It was a low, muffled voice, Alec noticed. It could be a man or a woman. He pulled the gun from the holster.

  “Message from who?” he called.

  There was a slight pause. Then he heard, “Uh, J.R. Yeah, that’s what it says, J.R.”

  Alec relaxed and put the gun down on the table. J.R., he thought. John Randall.

  A message from John Randall. Perhaps there’d been a change in plans. Something urgent, something that had to be discussed now, tonight, before tomorrow’s meeting. Perhaps another job, in addition to Holly Randall …

  “Okay, just a sec,” he said. He pulled up his pants and fastened them. Then he walked over to the door and opened it.

  He had only a brief glimpse, an impression of a dark figure standing before him, holding something up above its head. Something that might have been a hammer. Then that something, whatever it was, smashed into his forehead, just above his eyes, sending him staggering backward into the room.

  Amazingly, Alec didn’t fall. There was a horrible pain where he had been struck, and he could feel the wetness cover his eyes and nose as the blood poured down. But he remained upright. Reflexively, he turned around and fumbled for the night table. His hand was inches from the gun that lay there when the second blow came, at the back of his head. He heard a dull cracking noise and realized that it was his skull smashing into his brain. He saw bright whiteness, and he had the sensation of falling forward across the bed. Then everything went black.

  He wasn’t alive to feel the third blow.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Prisoner

  Holly had been driving for almost two hours, but as she neared her destination she realized that she was reluctant to arrive. The realization surprised her, because for the preceding thirty-six hours she had thought about nothing else but learning the truth. And the truth was here, ahead of her, in the place where she was going. She was sure of it.

  Yesterday morning, after a long, wakeful night of staring at the scrapbook, she had found the telephone number she wanted and placed the call. A friendly switchboard operator had rerouted the call to the appropriate office, where another friendly voice asked her to please hold for a few moments. There was barely a pause before the person she’d asked for—a woman, as it turned out—came on the line.

  The woman, a Mrs. Jackson, was brisk and businesslike, but Holly liked the sound of her voice. It took a few minutes of explaining before Holly could arrange the meeting she wanted. Mrs. Jackson must have been curious, Holly knew, but she politely refrained from asking any questions on the telephone. She had merely agreed to see her at two o’clock the following afternoon.

  Holly checked her watch as she drove through the somewhat undistinguished-looking town. One-twenty. Plenty of time. She glanced again at the scribbled instructions the woman had given her. She took the appropriate road away from the town and began looking for the signs that would lead her the rest of the way. There had been no snow today, but the gray landscape around her was still covered with it, as were the naked trees lining the road.

  At last she found the sign that led her to the gate, where she rummaged in her purse for identification. A uniformed officer in a kiosk checked a clipboarded list and made a phone call that took several minutes. Then the gate swung open and she was waved into a large enclosed property, where further signs pointed the way to a fairly empty visitors’ parking lot. She parked and got out of the car.

  One forty-three. She had seventeen minutes. But, judging from the routine at the gatehouse, it could very well take her that long just to get inside. No time for second thoughts; she was here now, and that was that. Swallowing her feeling of dread, she squared her shoulders and moved.

  What stood in the distance before her was a conglomeration of aggressively nondescript gray buildings, all connected to a slightly larger gray building in the center. The long, three-story wings looked rather like dormitories, which, she supposed, was exactly what they were. She began walking toward the central place, where steps led up to gray double doors and more people in black and gray uniforms.

  Inside the entrance, Holly was pleased to learn that Mrs. Jackson had left word that Ms. Randall was her guest, and that she need not be submitted to the usual ritual for visitors. A polite young woman checked something on a clipboard at the desk, made a brief phone call, and led Holly away down a long, industrially lit corridor to the right of the main entrance, through two locked doors, and into a reception area that might have been in any office building in America. Several secretaries at computer terminals glanced up at her with unconcealed curiosity as the woman led her past their desks to another door. This was a big, polished oak affair bearing a brass plaque in the center which read:

  New York State Department

  of Correctional Services

  KINGSTON WOMEN’S

  CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

  NAOMI JACKSON

  Superintendent

  The young woman officer knocked on the door, and after a moment Holly heard a soft buzzing sound. The officer stood aside for Holly, who walked into a medium-sized, carpeted, wood-paneled room dominated by a large desk that faced the door. A pretty, rather heavyset, middle-aged African-American woman in a dark blue suit stood beside the desk, smiling at her. As the door behind Holly closed with the distinct click of an automatic lock, the woman came forward, hand extended.

  “Ms. Randall,” she said.

  Holly shook her hand. “Mrs. Jackson. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  “Of course. I must admit I was curious to meet you. Please, sit down. We’ve just had lunch, and I was about to have coffee. Will you join me?”

  “Thank you.” Holly sat in one of the two padded chairs facing the desk while Mrs. Jackson went around to her chair, picked up her phone, and ordered coffee for two. There was a computer terminal off to the side of the desk, and a thick manila folder on the blotter. A small, artificial Christmas tree twinkled rather forlornly in a far corner, just below the inevitable framed color photographs of the current governor of New York and the president.

  Mrs. Jackson leaned forward, resting her elbows on the folder. She seemed to be making a study of Holly, assessing her. Holly sat quite still in her chair, enduring the scrutiny. Finally, the other woman broke the silence.

  “So, you’re Connie Randall’s daughter. I guess everyone knew she had a child, but I never expected to meet you. There’s been a bit of a buzz around the place since you called yesterday. Some of the staff have been here a long time; they remember Connie, and they were as curious as I was.”

  Holly remembered the furtive glances of the secretaries outside, followed by the swift averting of eyes and industrious pecking at keyboards. “Yes, I understand. Mrs. Jackson, I’ve only recently been informed of my—my true parentage, so this is all rather new to me. May I ask, how long have you been superintendent here?”

  “Twelve years next April. Connie was here for the first six years of my tenure. My predecessor probably knew more about her than I, but I’m afraid he’s no longer with us, rest his soul. If you’re simply interested in finding out general things about her, I think this will help.” She picked up the thick folder and held it out.

  Holly took the folder and opened it, glancing quickly through the contents. There were photocopies of official-looking documents, several sets of mug shots from the front and side, and what were apparently progress reports signed by various wardens and parole board members, and by Mrs. Jackson and a man named Charles Kendall. The predecessor,
apparently. There was also another set of papers: a running medical history signed by a succession of doctors and nurses, including a flat, thin plastic bar to which was attached a complete set of dental X rays. She held these up to the light, studying them.

  “It would help,” Mrs. Jackson said, “if you told me exactly what it is you want to know.”

  A secretary knocked and was buzzed in. She carried two cardboard cups of coffee, sugar and sweetener packets, and several containers of half-and-half, which she placed on the desk. The two women watched her in silence, waiting. She took a good look at Holly before scurrying out. The automatic click sounded louder this time.

  Holly placed the folder on her lap and picked up one of the cups. “I want to know what kind of woman she was, from someone who knew her better than my relatives at Randall House. I’ve read all the newspaper accounts, and so forth, but I—I don’t have a feel for what she was like.” She shrugged. “Does that make any sense?”

  “Yes, it does,” Mrs. Jackson said. “But are you sure you really want that information? Perhaps the past is better left—well, in the past. When you called, I assumed you would want her medical history—you know, in case you were thinking of getting married and having children, something like that.…”

  Holly had never thought of that. “Is there anything medical that I should know?”

  “Not at all. She was perfectly healthy. Very few illnesses over the years, no allergies, no disabilities or menstrual problems. She was quite normal—physically.”

  Holly leaned forward. “And, otherwise? Please, Mrs. Jackson, I want to know.”

  The superintendent leaned back in her chair, sipping her coffee. She regarded Holly for a long moment in silence. Then, apparently having made some decision, she put down the cup and folded her hands before her.

  “She wasn’t a nice woman, Ms. Randall. You know why she was here, of course. We don’t have many women here who could be described as ‘nice,’ but she was worse than most. She was arrogant and vain, completely self-centered. She regarded the other women as little more than servants. She got in a lot of trouble. Fights. If you look through that folder, you’ll find details. She broke a woman’s arm once, and she assaulted another woman with a shiv—I beg your pardon, a homemade weapon she’d fashioned from a soda can, of all things. She stabbed that woman in her right eye, and the doctor was unable to save it. That cost her several more years here, when she might have been paroled or even released much earlier.