The Inheritance

by Savage, Tom

  “Cool!” Sam said. “How about some white wine while you wait?”

  “That would be lovely,” Holly said.

  “Comin’ right up!” With that, Sam headed immediately back to the kitchen.

  Holly smiled over at the lawyer. “Your—son?”

  Gil blinked. “Uh, no, he’s not my son, Holly.”

  Oh, she thought, feeling the blood suffuse her cheeks as she looked around at the paintings and the nude statue and the greyhounds named after operatic lovers, both now stretched out by the fireplace. Of course Sam is not his son, you idiot! You can take the girl out of the Coachella Valley, et cetera. Perhaps that explains the rift between this man and my father all those years ago. She thought all of this, but all she managed to say was “Oh.” Then, to cover her awkwardness at her naïveté, she asked if she could use the telephone.

  Gil smiled and led her over to the couches closest to the fire as Sam came back in bearing a tray with a bottle in an ice bucket and three stemmed glasses. He poured and served while she called Randall from the phone on the coffee table. She told Mr. Wheatley that she would be away for the night and would return sometime tomorrow afternoon. Then she hung up and smiled at her hosts. They smiled, too, and toasted her.

  “Hope you don’t mind if I have mine in the kitchen,” Sam said. “I’m in charge of dinner.”

  “Do you need any help?” Holly asked.

  “Nope. You’re the guest. You stay right where you are and keep him out of my hair.” And he was gone again.

  Holly laughed. “He’s charming. Is he a lawyer, too?”

  “No,” Gil said. “You’re obviously not a fan of soap operas. He’s an actor, currently breaking hearts on a popular daytime drama. Sam Collins.”

  Holly stared at the archway through which the young man had disappeared. “Wow! How long have you two—I mean, uh—”

  He laughed again. “Seven years next June. But I don’t think you came all the way out here to discuss my private life. I rather thought you wanted to discuss yours.”

  Holly nodded and took a sip of the cool, sweet wine. Then she leaned back on the couch and began.

  “Yes,” she said. “I wanted to ask you about my father.”

  John was waiting for her in the Great Hall, at the bottom of the stairs. She had just come from her room to the gallery, preparing to go down and join him for cocktails. Her progress toward the stairs was arrested by a sudden, loud bang as the front door of the house was flung open and a large figure rushed forward across the black and white tiles toward her husband. As she watched from above, her husband turned, alerted by the noise.

  She did not hear the blow from where she was, but in the next instant John was sprawled backward across the bottom steps of the staircase, his arms and legs splayed at bizarre angles, a completely blank expression on his face. His assailant towered over him.

  It was Kevin Jessel. She recognized him now that he had temporarily stopped moving. Until now the figure had been a huge, presumably male blur of motion. Kevin Jessel had just punched her husband, John Randall, in the face, knocking him down.

  She stood quite still at the balustrade, staring, unable either to move or make a sound. There was something surrealistic, absurd, Felliniesque about the scene below, not merely its content but the sight of it from this distance, this angle. There was a sound, an awful, bellowing rasp coming from somewhere, but she couldn’t identify its source, so stunned, so awed was she by the sight. By the very idea that this person, this servant, this nonentity was assaulting her husband. And yet it was familiar, too, from nineteen years of experience, of repeated exposure to just this sort of behavior. A daily occurrence, really. She’d seen it all—and done it all—before.

  Even as she stared, fascinated, the hulking young man reached down and grasped John’s throat. He lifted him up from the stairs and held him with one hand while the other reared back in a fist. Two mighty blows followed in quick succession, one to her husband’s stomach and the next to his chin. This time she heard a muffled cracking sound as John flew down again to land on the checkered tiles beside the Christmas tree.

  It was that sound, and the sudden knowledge that the awful bellowing emanated from Kevin Jessel, that brought her back to reality. This was real; this was happening, now, before her, and she at last reacted. Without a conscious thought, without using any intellectual processes, she turned around, ran back to her bedroom, and unlocked the door. Then she was across the room, flinging open the drawer of the bedside table. She was already back outside in the hall when she heard the next sounds from downstairs, the words being shouted.

  “You! You! You killed my sister! You raped her, you animal!. That was your baby, not Leonard’s! I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you!”

  By this time she was halfway down the stairs. Her husband lay on his side now, moaning, while the crazed young man loomed above him, ranting.

  But now the scene had changed. Now she was in charge of it. This was familiar; this had happened before. The naked bodies of women, broken and still, on the tiles of the communal shower room, their blood being rinsed away down the drains. Jane Dee, that stupid loser, staring in shock at the gun aimed at her as she was doused with accelerant in the beach house. Her other husband, James William Randall III, charging toward her in the bedroom in Greenwich Village, fists raised, his face contorted by rage, just before his chest exploded into a huge, red flower. This she could handle.

  As she had done once before, twenty-four years ago, she calmly raised both arms out straight in front of her, aiming the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver at Kevin Jessel’s chest.

  “Stop!” she commanded. “Stop it!”

  The young man looked up at her, at the weapon now pointed at him, and froze. She kept her gaze locked on him: she was afraid that if she looked down at John, she would give in to the impulse to rush to him and take him in her arms. God, she loved him so much, but he was so weak and helpless. He was ruining everything. A useless, rich idiot …

  Kevin Jessel glared, now speechless. John continued to moan at his feet. She did not move, did not even blink. The three of them remained in that strange tableau for what seemed an eternity, until Mr. Wheatley came down the stairs to stand beside her. Still aiming the gun sure and true, she calmly instructed the butler to call Chief Helmer and get him here immediately. Without a word, the old man nodded and went past her down the stairs, toward the office.

  John slowly, painfully got up from the floor.

  “No,” he gasped. “No—police.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, and then she began to laugh.

  “Your father?” Gil Henderson said. “I—I don’t understand. What do you want to know about him?”

  Holly studied his face as she sipped her wine. Then she put the glass down on the coffee table and said, “Well, for one thing, who was he? I mean, I know his name was James Randall, but I don’t really know anything else—except that my mother killed him.”

  The fact that her mother, Constance Hall Randall, was still alive—was even now returning to Randall House from New York, no doubt—was not something she would share with this man. Not now, and probably not ever. That was her burden, her cross to bear.

  Gil Henderson’s next words drove all of this from her mind, as they drove the breath from her body.

  “No, Holly,” he said. “His name was not James Randall. Jim—James Randall—was not your father. His brother, John, is your father.”

  She stared, breathless. She was still seeing Gilbert Henderson in his well-appointed living room, and she was aware that his lips were moving. But all she could hear in her mind was the cryptic exchange she’d heard through the closet wall two days ago:

  “If you think about it, my emotional stake is as high as yours—if you’ve been telling me the truth, that is.”

  “I’ve told you the truth. Always.”

  Only very gradually did Holly’s senses return, including her sense of hearing.

  “… f
rom the moment we first saw each other at Yale,” Gil was saying. “Jim and I were together from that moment until that awful day twelve years later. The day he told me about the actress, this woman he’d met, and about his plan to marry her. I—I won’t even attempt to explain to you how I felt. That is not part of your story. So he married her, this Constance Hall. They’d talked it over, I gathered, and she was willing to go along with his idea. He wanted to be ‘normal’—no, let me get this exactly right: he wanted to appear to be ‘normal,’ whatever his definition of that word was. But that definition obviously did not include me, so I went away. I left him to it, to—whatever it was he was trying to do.

  “Well, he hadn’t been married more than three months before he learned the truth, and it must have struck him as very sad. He was gay, through and through, and trying to be anything else was a lie. And when we live a lie, we do not live at all. I forget who said that, but truer words were never spoken. His marriage was a joke: he hadn’t so much as consummated it. Not that she cared, mind you. Constance had her own agenda.”

  Somehow, Holly found her voice. “Agenda?”

  He shrugged. “She wanted his money, and his name. That was all. She never loved him, any more than he loved her. She was supposed to be a beard, you know, for Daddy Randall and the board of directors at NaFCorp. Well, she was an actress, so it wasn’t difficult, I daresay. She went along with it because she wanted to be Mrs. Randall. I understand she was from a poor family. I can’t imagine how poor it must have been to prompt her to do that.”

  “I can,” Holly said, thinking of 66 Sixth Street, the hag with the beer can. It was one thing about Constance Randall she understood perfectly.

  “Well,” Gil went on, “they went through all the motions of being a happily married couple, while secretly leading their own lives. Constance fell in love with Jim’s brother, John., and he with her. They met at the wedding—are you loving this? They were carrying on long before the murder. Oh, they were discreet about it, I guess. Only that doorman who testified at her trial was aware of their secret, and even he got it wrong. The ‘other gentlemen’ he kept mouthing off about were actually only one gentleman: John.” He shrugged again.

  “And what about my—uh, James?” Holly asked. She’d almost said, “my father.” But John Randall was her father.

  Gilbert Henderson stood up. He went over to the glass wall that Holly now saw was actually a series of sliding doors. He stared out at the cold, gray seascape, the choppy bay and ragged sky. When at last he spoke, his voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  “He tried to come back to me. Can you believe that? This man I thought I knew, I thought I’d loved. He came to me. I sent him away, of course. But there were others, I gather. Other men, quite a few of them. I guess he went a little crazy. There he was, married to Lady Macbeth, or whatever role she was playing. And I told him to drop dead—words I would later regret, in the circumstances. He didn’t have a marriage, and he no longer had—perhaps I flatter myself, but I don’t think so—he no longer had the one he loved most. So he went crazy. Drinking. Running around. Drugs, too, I wouldn’t doubt. Sometimes he’d disappear for weeks at a time. And in his private desperation, he began to—to lash out. At her, I mean. I didn’t know her, never even met her until the day you were born, but I heard things from mutual friends. I know that he abused her. He beat her up a couple of times, and once he beat John up. Well, I guess you can see where all this is going. I think he attacked her that morning, just like she said. So she shot him. But I think she was already planning to murder him.”

  Now he turned from the view to look at her. Slowly, as in a dream, Holly nodded.

  “Was John involved in the murder plan?” she whispered.

  He came over and sat down beside her again. “I have no idea, and I assure you I don’t care.”

  She stared at him. “You’ve known all this for twenty-four years. You knew I was John’s child, and you knew that my grandfather and Alicia would never have left me the inheritance if they’d known. And yet you never said a word, to them or anyone. You even helped to get me back here. Why?”

  Gil surprised her then. He reached over and gently took both her hands in his own. He leaned forward, staring deep into her eyes.

  “My dear,” he whispered, “if I have to explain that to you, I can only assume you haven’t been listening.”

  They regarded each other for a long moment, a moment in which she began to understand him, and to like him even more than before. Love, she thought. The great leveler. This man had loved James Randall all his life, even after what James had done to him. He’d loved him enough to send him away. Enough to take the baby away from Constance, his murderer, after he was dead, and to swear that the baby was James’s. Enough to lie, if necessary, to keep Constance’s lover—and possible accomplice—from getting a fortune. Gil Henderson had always loved James Randall. He still loved him, even now.

  Holly knew in that moment that she could not tell him that Constance was alive and well and living in Randall House. She had no idea what he might do. She didn’t even want to think about what he might do.

  They were still staring at each other when Sam Collins arrived from the kitchen to break the spell.

  “Dinner!” he announced.

  Pete Helmer smiled up at Debbie as she handed him a fresh cup of coffee. She smiled back and ruffled his hair. They’d been an item for almost a week now, since Christmas, so he supposed it was okay for her to be so familiar here at the station. Not that it mattered, really: aside from the prisoner, they were the only two people in the building. The Two Stooges, Hank and Buddy, were out on their nightly rounds.

  “Did our guest eat his dinner?” he asked her.

  “Nope. Didn’t even touch it, last I looked.”

  Pete sighed, took a quick sip of the coffee, and got up from his desk. Moving to the back of the office, he went through the connecting doors to the back room.

  There were two small, bar-fronted cells here, side by side, separated by a cement wall. Each cell had a cot, a table, a folding chair, and a sink. They were holding cells, essentially, so there were no toilets. The prisoners simply called for someone and were taken to the station’s rest rooms. Well, the men’s room: in Pete’s nine years as chief here, there had never been a woman in the cells. There were rarely any men, either, unless a fight broke out somewhere, or old Tod Farley got loaded and passed out in his tankard down at the pub. Randall was a very peaceful place, for which Pete was grateful. Of course, there was that robbery-murder over at the Kismet, but that wasn’t really Randall. That was the highway.

  Now, however, they had a guest. Kevin Jessel sat on the cot in the cell on the right, slumped forward, staring down at the floor. The food Debbie had brought him from the diner—Ilona’s special meat loaf, with mashed potatoes and gravy and string beans and Ilona’s famous peach cobbler—sat untouched on the table before him. It would be cold now, Pete thought.

  “Hey, Kevin,” he said to the prisoner. “I sure am sorry about this, but I didn’t really have a choice. Mrs. Randall is thinking about pressing charges, but she’ll have to wait till after the holiday to find a judge, let alone a lawyer. Now, I can hold you here for twenty-four hours, even without a warrant, but I’m not gonna do that. I’ll let you go at nine tomorrow morning, but only on one condition.”

  He paused, waiting for the young man on the other side of the bars to look up, or to in any way acknowledge that he was listening. Kevin did not move. With a sigh, Pete pressed on.

  “The condition is, don’t go anywhere near that house or those people, at least until we can get this thing sorted out, okay? Kevin?”

  Now, finally, Kevin Jessel turned his head, looked up at him, and nodded once. Pete was surprised to see tears in his eyes. Embarrassed, he quickly looked away at an empty corner of the cell.

  “Okay, then,” he said. He almost turned to go, but curiosity got the best of him. That, and pity: Kevin had just buried his sister, and his dad wasn�
�t doing too well, either. He looked back at the young man. “What the hell happened, Kevin? Do you want to talk about it? We’re talkin’ assault and battery here. That can be a very serious charge. You may go to jail—I mean, a real jail.” He smiled at his paltry joke, but the other man did not. “The good news is, Mr. Randall’s okay. You just winded him, and he’ll have a bruise on his chin, I should think. But, goddammit, I sure wish you’d talk to me.”

  At last, the man on the cot spoke. “Thanks, Pete, but I really don’t want to talk about it. I—I appreciate your concern, and I’ll do what you say. I’ll stay away from that sonofabitch, for one reason: if I ever, ever see him again, I’m going to kill him. This isn’t idle talk, and I guess I shouldn’t say it to a cop, but it is God’s honest truth. I’ll kill him, Pete. I swear to God I will!”

  Pete opened his mouth, about to make the obvious response to such a threat. The cop’s response, the rulebook’s response. Then he looked at Kevin Jessel, into his eyes, and stopped. He licked his lips and said, “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Fair enough,” Kevin replied.

  Pete sighed again. Then, with a sense of frustration, with a hundred questions that wouldn’t be answered in any case, he went back into the front office.

  Debbie was no longer the only other person there. Toby Carter stood in the center of the room, his German shepherd at his side. Pete stopped when he saw them. They’d never entered the station house before.

  “That dog isn’t supposed to be here, Toby,” he said.

  Toby shrugged, watching him. The dog was watching him, too.

  “I guess you want to see Kevin Jessel,” Pete said.

  The boy nodded.

  Pete nodded, too. “Have you brought him a file or a stick of dynamite?” He chuckled.

  Toby did not chuckle. Neither did the dog. They both watched him silently, gravely, and he was acutely aware that Debbie was watching the scene with great interest, a little smile on her face. She looked as if she’d placed her own private bet on the outcome, and he knew very well whom her money was on.