by Sue Grafton
I said, "I thought we should talk."
"About what?"
"Olive's death. Lyda Case is dead, too."
"Bass told me that."
My smile had a bitter feeling to it. "Ah. Bass. How did he get involved? Somehow I get the feeling you might have put a call through to him in New York."
"That's right."
"Dirty pool, Ebony."
She shrugged, undismayed. "It's your own damn fault."
"My fault?"
"I asked you what was going on and you wouldn't say. It's my family, Kinsey. I have a right to know."
"I see. And who thought about bringing Daniel into it?"
"I did, but Bass was the one who tracked him down. He and Daniel had an affair years ago, until Bass broke it off. There was unfinished business between them. Daniel was more than happy to accommodate him in the hopes of rekindling the fires."
"Selling me out in the process," I said.
She smiled slightly, but her gaze was intent. "You didn't have to agree, you know. You must have had some unfinished business of your own or you wouldn't have been suckered in so easily."
"True," I said. "That was smart. God, he nicked right in there and gave you everything, didn't he?"
"Not quite."
"Oh? Something missing? Some little piece of the scheme incomplete?"
"We still don't know who killed Olive."
"Or Lyda Case," I said, "though the motive was probably not the same. I suspect she somehow figured out what was going on. Maybe she went back through Hugh's papers and came up with something significant."
"Like what?"
"Hey, if I knew that, I'd probably know who killed her, wouldn't I?"
Ebony stirred restlessly. "I have things to do. Why don't you tell me what you want."
"Well, let's see. Just in rambling around town, it occurred to me that it might help to find out who inherits Olive's stock."
"Stock?"
"Her ten voting shares. Surely, those wouldn't be left to someone outside the family. So who'd she leave 'em to?"
For the first time she was genuinely flustered and the color in her cheeks seemed real. "What difference does it make? The bomb was meant for Terry. Olive died by mistake, didn't she?"
"I don't know. Did she?" I snapped back. "Who stands to benefit? You? Lance?"
"Ash," came the voice. "Olive left all her stock to her sister Ashley." Mrs. Wood had appeared in the upstairs hall. I looked up to see her clinging to the rail, the walker close by, her whole body trembling with exertion.
"Mother, you don't have to concern yourself with this."
"I think I do. Come to my room, Kinsey." Mrs. Wood disappeared.
I glanced at Ebony and then pushed past her and went up the stairs.
Chapter 24
* * *
We sat in her room near French doors that opened onto a balcony facing the sea. Sheer curtains were pulled across the doorway, billowing lazily in a wind that smelled of salt. The bedroom suite was dark and old, a clumsy assortment of pieces she and Woody must have salvaged from their early married years: a dresser with chipped veneer, matching misshapen lamps with dark-red silk shades. I was reminded of thrift-store windows filled with other people's junk. Nothing in the room would qualify as "collectible," much less antique.
She sat in a rocker upholstered in horsehair, frayed and shiny, picking at the fabric on the arms of the chair. She looked awful. The skin on her face had been blanched by Olive's death and her cheeks were mottled with liver spots and threaded with visible capillaries. She looked as though she'd lost weight in the last few days, the flesh hanging in pleats along her upper arms, her bones rising to the surface like a living lesson in anatomy. Even her gums had shrunk away from her teeth, the aging process suddenly as visible as in time-lapse photography. She seemed weighed down with some as yet unidentified emotion that left her eyes red-rimmed and lusterless. I didn't think she'd survive it, whatever it was.
She had clumped her way back to her room with the aid of her walker, which she kept close to her, holding on to it with one trembling hand.
I sat in a hard-backed chair near hers, my voice low. "You know what's going on, don't you?" I said.
"I think so. I should have spoken up sooner, but I so hoped my suspicions were groundless. I thought we'd buried the past. I thought we'd moved on, but we haven't. There's so much shame in the world as it is. Why add to it?" Her voice quavered and her lips trembled as she spoke. She paused, struggling with some inner admonition. "I promised Woody I wouldn't speak of it again."
"You have to, Helen. People are dying."
For a moment, her dark eyes sparked to life. "I know that," she snapped. The energy was short-lived, a match flaring out. "You do the best you can," she went on. "You try to do what's right. Things happen and you salvage what's left."
"Nobody's blaming you."
"I blame myself. It's my fault. I should have said something the minute things began to go wrong. I knew the connection, but I didn't want to believe it, fool that I am."
"Is this related to Woody?"
She shook her head.
"Who then?"
"Lance," she whispered. "It started with him."
"Lance?" I said, disconcerted. It was the last name I expected to hear.
"You'd think the past could be diffused... that it wouldn't have the power to affect us so long after the fact."
"How far back does this go?"
"Seventeen years, almost to the day." She clamped her mouth shut, then shook her head again. "Lance was a hellion in his teens, rebellious and secretive. He and Woody clashed incessantly, but boys do that. Lance was at an age when of course he had to assert himself."
"Ash says he had a couple of scrapes with the law back then."
She stirred impatiently. "He was constantly in trouble. 'Acting out' they call it now, but I didn't think he was a bad boy. I still don't. He had a troubled adolescence..."She broke off, taking a deep breath. "I don't mean to belabor the point. What's done is done. Woody finally sent him off to military school, and after that he went into the army. We hardly saw him until he came home that Christmas on leave. He seemed fine by then. Grown up. Mature. Calm and pleasant and civil to us both. He became interested in the company. He talked about settling down and learning the business. Woody was thrilled." She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief, which she pressed to her lips, blotting the film of perspiration that had formed like dew.
So far she wasn't telling me a thing I didn't already know. "What happened?"
"That year... when Lance came home and things were going so well... that year... it was New Year's Day. I remember how happy I was things were off to such a good start. Then Bass came to us with the most preposterous tale. Somehow, in my heart, I suppose I've always blamed him. He spoiled everything. I've never really forgiven him, though it was hardly his fault. Bass was thirteen then. Sly. He knew about wickedness even at that age and he enjoyed it all so very much."
Still does, I thought. "What did he tell you?"
"He said he'd walked in on Lance. He came straight to us with that sneaky look in his eyes, pretending to be so upset when he knew exactly what he was about. At first, Woody didn't believe a word of it."
"He walked in on Lance doing what?"
There was a silence and then she pushed on, her voice dropping so low I was forced to lean closer. "With Olive," she whispered. "Lance and Olive. In her room on the bed. She was sixteen and so beautiful. I thought I'd die of the shame and embarrassment, the loathing at what was going on. Woody was crazed. He was in a towering rage. Lance swore it was innocent, that Bass misunderstood, but that was nonsense. Absurd to think we'd believe any such thing. Woody beat Lance to within an inch of his life. A fearful beating. I thought he'd kill him. Lance swore it only happened once. He swore he'd never lay another hand on her and he honored that. I know he did."
"That's when Olive was sent away to boarding school," I said.
Helen nodded.
"Who else knew about the incident?"
"No one. Just the five of us. Lance and Olive, Bass and Woody and me. Ebony was off in Europe. Ash knew something dreadful had happened, but she never knew what it was."
There was a silence. Helen smoothed the frayed fabric on the arm of the rocker where she'd picked strands loose. She glanced at me. Her expression seemed tinged with guilt, like an old dog that's piddled somewhere you haven't discovered yet. There was more, something she didn't want to own up to.
"What's the rest?" I asked. "What else?"
She shook her head, her cheeks turning pink in patches.
"Just tell me, Helen. It can't matter now."
"Yes, it does," she whispered. She'd begun to weep. I could see her clamp down, forcing her feelings back into the box she'd kept them in all these years.
I waited so long that I didn't think she meant to finish. Her hands began to shake in a separate dance of their own, a jitterbug of anxiety.
Finally she spoke. "Lance was lying about the two of them. It had gone on for years. Woody never knew, but I suspected as much."
"You suspected Lance was abusing her and you never interfered?"
"What could I say? I had no proof. I kept them away from each other whenever I could. He'd go off to summer camp. She'd stay with friends of ours in Maine. I never left them alone in the house. I hoped it was a phase, something that would disappear of its own accord. I thought if I called attention to it... I don't know what I thought. It was so unspeakable. A mother doesn't sit a boy down and discuss such things. I didn't want to pry, and Olive denied the slightest suggestion that anything was amiss. If she'd come to me, I'd have stepped in. Of course I would, but she never said a word. She might have been the one who initiated the contact for all I knew."
"How long did this go on?" I was having a hard time keeping the judgment out of my voice, afraid if she sensed the full range of my outrage, she'd clam up.
"Lance was obsessed with her almost from infancy. He was five when she was born and I was so relieved, you see, that he didn't resent her. It was just him and Ebony until Olive came along. He'd been the baby so I was delighted he seemed taken with her. It must have started as childish curiosity and advanced to something else. It did end once they were discovered. They could hardly tolerate each other's company these past few years, but by then the damage had been done. She had terrible problems."
"Sexual problems, I'd assume."
Helen nodded, cheeks coloring. "She also suffered deep depressions that would go on for months. All she did was run, run, run. Anything to escape the feelings. Play and spend. Spend and play. That's how she lived."
Rapidly I sorted through all the things I'd been told, processing the trivia I'd picked up in passing. "Olive said she and Bass had a falling-out when he was home for Thanksgiving. What was that about?"
"Something silly. I don't even remember now what the subject matter was. One of those ridiculous spats people get into when they've drunk too much. Bass was furious and wanted to get back at her, but it wasn't about anything. Petty temper, that's all."
I watched her carefully, making my mind a blank, trying to let the sense of this filter in. It had started with Lance, with Wood/Warren, talk of a takeover, evidence of insurance fraud. Someone had set Lance up and I'd been caught in the same trap. When Olive died, I'd assumed it was business-related, an accident. It was meant to look like that, but it wasn't. I felt the answer leap at me, so obvious once I knew what had gone on. "Oh shit," I said. "Bass told Terry, didn't he?"
"I think so," she said, almost inaudibly. "I don't think Terry's like the rest of us. He's not a well man. He doesn't seem right to me. Even when they met, he seemed 'off' somehow, but he was crazy about Olive..."
" 'Obsessed' is the word I've heard applied," I broke in. "That he worshiped the ground she walked on."
"Oh, he adored her, there's no doubt of that. It was just what she needed and I thought it would all work out. She had such a low opinion of herself all her life. She couldn't seem to sustain a relationship until Terry came along. I thought she deserved a little happiness."
"You mean because she was 'damaged goods,' don't you? Tainted by what Lance had done."
"Well, she was tainted. Who knows what bestial appetites Lance had wakened in her?"
"That was hardly her fault."
"Of course not, but what nice boy was ever going to look at her if the truth came out? Terry seemed like a godsend."
"So the two of you decided not to say anything to him."
"We never spoke of it between us," she said tartly, "so we could hardly speak of it to him. Why stir up trouble when everything was going so well?"
I got up abruptly and went to the phone, dialing Lieutenant Dolan's number at the Santa Teresa PD. The clerk said she'd put me through and I waited for Dolan's line to ring. Helen was right. What was done was done. There wasn't any point in blaming Bass. If anything, the blame lay with Helen and Woody. Olive died because Helen was too bloody polite to deal with the truth.
"Where's Terry now?" I said to Helen over my shoulder.
She was weeping openly. It seemed a little late for tears, but I didn't say so. "He was here a short while ago. He's on his way home."
When Dolan answered, I identified myself and laid it out for him, chapter and verse.
"I'll have him picked up for questioning," Dolan said. "We'll get a warrant so we can search the premises. He put that bomb together somewhere."
"He might have assembled it at work."
"We'll check that," he said. "Hang on." He put his hand across the mouth of the receiver and I could hear him issue an order to someone else in the room. He came back on the line. "Let me tell you what we have on this end. We got a match on the prints we lifted from the rental car Lyda Case was found in. They belong to a fellow named Chris Emms, who was charged with the murder of his foster mother twenty years ago. Blew her up with a package bomb he sent through the mail. The jury brought in a verdict of temporary insanity."
"Oh geez, I get it. No prison for him."
"Right. He was committed to the state hospital at Camarillo and escaped after eighteen months."
"And he was never picked up?"
"He's been free as a bird. I just talked to one of the staff docs and they're hunting up the old records to see what else they have on him."
"Was he really nuts or faking it?"
"Anybody who does what he did is nuts."
"Will you let the family know as soon as he's in custody?"
"Will do. I'll send somebody over in the meantime just in case he decides to come back."
"You better beef up security at Wood/Warren, too. He may make a try for Lance."
"Right," Dolan said. He broke off the connection.
I left Helen huddled in the rocker. I went downstairs, looking for Ebony, and told her what was going on. When I let myself out, she was on her way upstairs to see her mother. I couldn't imagine what they'd talk about. I had a flash of Olive sailing through the air, flying to oblivion. I just couldn't shake the image. I drove home feeling low, my perpetual state these days. I get tired of digging around in other people's dirty laundry. I'm sick of knowing more about them than I should. The past is never nice. The secrets never have to do with acts of benevolence or good deeds suddenly coming to light. Nothing's ever resolved with a handshake or a heart-to-heart talk. So often, humankind just seems tacky to me, and I don't know what the rest of us are supposed to do in response.
Under the bandages, my burns were chafed and fiery hot, throbbing dully. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. With my hair singed across the front and my eyebrows gone, I looked startled somehow, as if unprepared for the sudden conclusion to the case at this point. Quite true. I hadn't had time to process events. I thought about Daniel and Bass. Mentally I had to close the door on them, but it felt like unfinished business, and I didn't like that. I wanted closure, surcease. I wanted peace of mind again.
I pushed through the gate
, pulling mail out of the box as I passed. I let myself into my place, and slung my handbag on the couch. I felt a desperate need to take a bath, symbolic as it was. It was only 4:00 in the afternoon, but I was going to scrub up and then go pound on Rosie's door. It was Tuesday and she was bound to be back in business by now. My neighborhood tavern usually opens at 5:00, but maybe I could sweet-talk her into letting me in early. I needed a heavy Hungarian dinner, a glass of white wine, and someone to fuss at me like a mother.
I paused at my desk and checked my answering machine. There were no messages. The mail was dull. Belatedly, I registered the fact that my bathroom door was closed. I hadn't left it that way. I never do. My apartment is small and the light from the bathroom window helps illuminate the place. I turned my head and I could feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. The knob rotated and the door swung open. That portion of the room was in shadow at that hour of day, but I could see him standing there. My spinal column turned to ice, the chill radiating outward to my limbs, which I couldn't will to move. Terry emerged from the bathroom and circled the couch. In his right hand he had a gun pointed right at my gut. I felt my hands rise automatically, palms up, the classic posture of submission guns seem to inspire.
Terry said, "Oops, you caught me. I expected to be gone by the time you got home."
"What are you doing here?"
"I brought you a present." He made a gesture toward the kitchenette.
Trancelike, I turned to see what he was pointing to. On the counter was a shoe box wrapped in Christmas paper, white HO HO HO's emblazoned on a dark-green background with a cartoon Santa swinging from each O. A preformed red satin bow was stuck to the lid. Surprise, surprise. Terry Kohler wanted me to have a box of death.
"Nice," I managed, though my mouth was dry.