WIDOW (10 page)

“I loved him at one time,” she said carefully. He noticed her gaze had wandered from him to the wall just over his left shoulder. In order to lie to him more easily?

He sighed and began, little by little, bunching up the doily into his fist.

“Son, he was as good a man as he could be. He was thrilled when I found out, after trying for so many years, that I was going to have you.” Now she was looking at him again. Perhaps some of this was truth.

“So why did you leave him months after I was born if he was such a good man?”

“He became progressively . . . unkind.”

“Unkind? Did he beat you or something?”

She shook her head and the cap of tight curls clung in place like a helmet.

When she didn't continue, he prodded, “How was he unkind? You never told me that before.”

“He couldn't help it. None of it was his fault. He was a nervous man. You have to remember that neither one of us was young anymore. A baby in the house . . . it just . . . he couldn't . . .”

“He hated me.”

“No, Son! He never hated you.”

“Then what happened? I think it's time you tell me, Mother. Past time.”

It was her turn to sigh. She brought her gaze level with his and spoke softly. “He had a nervous condition.”

Son shook his head, puzzled. “What does that mean? He had a nervous tic? He snapped his fingers at the dinner table? He paced floors?”

“Don't be flip. When I say ‘nervous condition’ I mean something quite a bit more serious and you knew what I meant.” The scold left her voice when she continued. “Your father was prone to rages. I didn't know it until after we were married a while. And the rages were prompted by something no one could figure out. He lost his temper all the time. He had no control over it. Out of the blue he'd become thoroughly enraged, shouting at the top of his lungs so the neighbors could hear . . . smashing things . . .”

“He didn't hurt you?”

“He took it out on objects around him, never me. Your crying—and babies cry, they can't help it—but your crying sent him into cataclysmic anger. He would go through the house breaking chairs and china and anything else that got in his way. I'd try to soothe you, but the noise he made and his shouting frightened you so that you cried all the harder.”

“What happened?”

“I left him. One day I packed our things while he was at work and I . . . left him.”

“He never knew where you went?” He knew this part of the family history. They had skipped town, which at the time was Sacramento, California, and taken up residence in Houston, Texas. She was afraid his father would follow them. She lost touch with him forever.

“He never found us,” she said. “Sometimes I think I should have tried to stay longer.”

He thought so too. Maybe then he might have met his father face to face.

“But he was too violent,” she continued. “I was scared all the time. In the beginning he'd apologize and say he had had a bad day, he didn't know what was wrong with him, he wouldn't do it again. Yet the next day something would anger him and off he'd go, stomping around the house like a bull. It wasn't a good environment for a child. I did my best, Son. I'm sorry.”

“Why didn't you ever tell me before? It would have made things more understandable.”

“Do you want the truth or a convenient lie?”

He had the doily balled tight in his fist, knuckles showing white. “I want the truth, Mother.” Don't lie to me. You've been lying to me for years now.

“I . . . I was afraid. I had to wait to be sure his condition . . . that you didn't . . .”

“What?” Though he was not so stupid that he didn't see where she was headed, and what she was going to say to him, what he expected her to say, it still caused flashing lights to go off in his brain, powder kegs of brilliance that numbed him.

“I didn't know if perhaps you had inherited . . .”

“You thought I'd be like him, didn't you? You wouldn't tell me because you had to see if I'd grow into a violent man, too. It was more than any ’nervous condition,’ wasn't it? He was insane or near enough to have been handed a medical certificate saying so.”

Her gaze wandered away to the window where the hydrangea had shaken out great purple heads of blooms. “I didn't know what to think. I was . . . worried.”

“Well, are you satisfied I'm not like him? I don't break things and I don't shout.” Then he laughed and she turned back to him. “I just solve murder mysteries for a living. That's pretty violent.”

She smiled with him now. “I love you, Son. If I could have given you your father, I would have endured almost anything. But it was hellish. It was a nightmare, and I couldn't subject you to that kind of household. You were my responsibility. I owed it to you to get us out before it was too late.”

He kept his thoughts to himself about that. He would rather not discuss her motivation. He knew she needed his approval for it, however, so he stood from the chair, dropping the balled doily into the seat behind him, and he went to her bed. He cupped her old face in his big hands. He could smell the powder she sprinkled on her nightclothes. Prince Machiavelli's Windsong. Sweet, floral, heady. He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Mother, I love you, too. You've always done your best.”

Now he was released and free to clean the house. He must wash her clothes. He had a basket of ironing to finish. Tonight he must finish scanning Death on the Moor so that he could find out if it was the rectory maid who killed the victim.

On the way down the hall he again tripped on a fold in the carpet. He dropped to his knees and beat it into submission, the sound a muffled tattoo in his ears. Finally it spread out flatly along the wood floor. He'd find carpet tacks and the hammer. He'd pound the damn thing down before he broke his fool neck.

With anger boiling inside, he thought that it was possible he was more his father's son than his mother ever suspected. In fact, he had to admit that it was a certainty.

It explained his own impatience, his volatile nature (which he was careful to keep under wraps when around his mother), and maybe it even explained his darkest of secrets. But he wasn't sure of that.

Not that it mattered.

A man was what he was, born or bred, and nothing in all of Earth could change it. Although life was a mystery written by the cleverest of authors, Son knew most people were preordained to function just one specific way and no other.

Besides, he thought, fumbling through the hall closet for his tool box, who would want to change anything?

“I love you, Son,” he whispered at the hammer he held close to his lips. He grinned at the sound of her high, old-lady voice coming from his mouth.

He could have become a ventriloquist. No doubt about it.

Just as his father could have become a murderer had his wife stayed around long enough to provide a victim. That's what she was really telling him now that she had finally spoken of temper, and rages, and her fear to stay.

“Chip off the old block,” he murmured, hauling a box of shiny black tacks from the back of the closet. “I'm my daddy's only boy.”

“Son, I'm going to go to the bathroom. You don't have to come, I can make it myself,” his mother called at his back.

He started, dropping the tacks all over the floor, and backed quickly from the closet to find her clutching her robe together with one hand and steadying herself against the wall with the other. Her head shook and her hands trembled, and she was white as first-driven snow.

The shout welling in his throat died there; the fire that flared was quenched as he swallowed against it. “Mother, you should have called me. Let me help you, please.”

He took her arm and let her lean on him as they made their slow, uneven way to the bathroom door. “I could have done it,” she protested.

“That's what I'm here for.” He stood guard outside the closed door while she made her water and emptied her bowels.

He didn't notice that he was tapping his thigh with the hammer head, and that later in the day he'd discover a bruise there that would require an ice pack to bring down the swelling.

 

Nine

 

“I wonder where the guy was killed?” Shadow strolled up one side of the circling staircase from the gigantic open living room to the third floor, trailing her fingertips along the wall. Her footsteps on the marble staircase rang out across the open spaces.

Charlene sat cross-legged on the carpet in the living room, leaning back against the sofa. Her eyes were unfocused, staring ahead of her. Her hands lay quietly in her lap. It was evident she was not going to answer the question. She might not have heard it.

Shadow paused at the top of the curving staircase and looked down to where Charlene sat, trance-like. She drew in a breath, wondering what she was going to do. She'd try to get through, keep talking. She hadn't any other plan devised.

“They said he was a monster. He threw the biggest parties along this coast. He had this place built to specification, all these windows barred.” She swept her arm before her toward the front of the house where the huge double doors opened onto a portico. Two-story windows blanketed the walls on both sides of the entrance, but ugly, black wrought-iron bars set into the brick mortar marred the grace of the scene.

“Did you notice even the middle section of the mansion is barred? Charlene?”

No answer. Not a flicker of an eyelash.

“Can you imagine it? The guy's into young boys. He throws his wild parties with booze and drugs, invites all the kids in here, then he locks the doors and pockets the keys. They're locked in a prison. That's what it looks like when you come down the drive to it, you know—a prison. Or maybe a boys' detention center. Something you think you'd see stashed away on some forbidden island for the most violent inmates.”

She wished she hadn't said “inmates.” Damn.

She moved along the railing overlooking the entrance way, feeling the smooth mahogany beneath the palm of her right hand. It seemed to have a warmth of its own, a fire inside. Most of the mansion was cold, always cold. Sunlight came in around two in the afternoon and began to warm the marble, heating the spacious rooms, but until then it was a freezer even on the warmest days. Yet the wood that her hand skimmed over felt good to her. It might have come from a sunny forest on a mountain slope; the polished grain still contained the summers of a hundred years.

“Okay,” Shadow continued, glancing often to see if she was making any headway reaching Charlene. “This nutcase built the mansion, threw his parties, locked the boys inside and had his way with them. They say he must have locked in the wrong kid that night. He probably paid some of the boys to service him and one another, but that night, hell, he must have offered money to his murderer, and it just didn't set right. Do you think that's how it happened?”

Charlene stared. Stared. Had not moved a muscle.

“Well, the story goes that the cops were called, they were always being called by neighbors because of the noisy wild parties. The cops knew this place like the back of their hands, they'd been out here so much. So they come out again, a couple of squad cars. They park in the circular drive and walk up the steps to those doors. No hurry, they've been here a dozen times, right?”

She pointed to the front where the police would come on a routine complaint.

“A dozen boys are piled up at the door, banging on it. They can't get out, you see, because the owner had the keys in his pocket, and they didn't know that. And the owner was dead by then. They said it was a real blood bath in here. Blood on the walls, on the stairs. The kid who did him in used a kitchen knife. The cops say, "Open the door! What's going on here?" The boys are screaming and crashing open the windows with chairs and beer bottles. But they couldn't squeeze out of the bars. Some of them are screaming and some are crying and pleading to get out. The cops look at one another. They think there's a fire inside or something and the kids can't get out. They have to shoot the lock off the door, telling the kids to step back, get outta the way. And what do they find when they get inside?”

Shadow paused coming down the opposite curving staircase. “Charlene? You heard this story? Isn't it fantastic, like a movie story or something?”

Charlene grunted softly. Shadow jerked a little at the sound. Well, it was better than nothing. She knew about nothing. It was a dead place. And lonely. She didn't want Charlene to wander in that place if there was any way she could prevent it. She nodded, moved slowly, step by step down the stairs.

“It's like a movie, all right. The cops get in here and boys are all over them, scrambling to get outside. Half of them aren't even fully dressed. They're in their underwear and bathing suits. A few are starkers. Some of them have already vomited, others are rushing outdoors to throw up on the lawn and in that circular flower bed you drive around out there. Then the cops see the blood. It was up here somewhere, top of the stairs . . . somewhere here.” She halted and turned around to look up to the landing on the third floor where she had just come from. She shivered, wrapped both arms around herself.

“They got the kid who did it. Because of all the witnesses and how the stories matched, they let the kid off on self-defense. He was just fourteen, they said. A big, gangly, red-headed, freckled fourteen-year-old. He wasn't gay. He'd come along with a friend who told him there was a party. He was from Houston somewhere and he didn't know the reputation of the parties in the Shoreville Mansion. When the owner came after him, he panicked, they said. He begged to be released from the house. Everyone laughed at him and he just went berserk. Ran for the kitchen and got a knife. Found the owner at the top of the stairs, threatened to gut him if he wasn't let free. Who knows what happened then? Maybe they laughed at him again or the old guy moved on him. Tragic,” she said quietly, suddenly thinking about her children and the one tragedy that had changed her own life forever. “An accidental thing.”