Bloodlines (36 page)

"With reason?"

He hesitated, then said, "Yes. Anyway, Lillian said that she didn't think she could ever forgive Mitch for what he did to my mother. She said that if I wouldn't take Auburn's offer, she'd like to know how she could help me to become free of Mitch, because she would never believe that Estelle would have wanted me to live my life always doing just what he wanted me to do."

"So you decided to take Warren's offer?"

"Yes. As for Mitch and all his schemes--I haven't ever seen them do anyone any good. Not even Mitch, really."

"So what do you want to do?"

"Invent things," he said, then blushed. "I mean, I have some ideas, and know some people I'd like to work with, guys from school."

"Like the GPS thing you were talking about the other night?"

"Yes. I want to be part of what's happening with that." He paused, then said, "At least, that was my plan until yesterday."

"Do you lose the money now that they know the real--well, I mean, the original Max Ducane is dead?"

"No, it's mine," he said, without much enthusiasm.

"Okay, you have an idea, some people to work with, and the funds to try it. So what's the problem?"

"Max Ducane," he said quietly.

"But you just said--"

"I'm using his money. I'm using his inheritance. He's a murder victim."

I thought about that for a moment, then said, "He was a murder victim twenty years ago, Max. You didn't cause that to happen by agreeing to Warren's plan."

"No, but it wouldn't be right to just--let me put it this way. Maybe someone else could say, 'Too bad, that's just the past.' But I can't. For one thing, well--not many people know this, but I'm living at Lillian's house."

I must have raised a brow or something, because he quickly added, "Just for a few weeks. Then--well, never mind."

"What?"

"There was a plan that I would move into the house where her daughter lived. I was going to rent it, maybe buy it from her if I liked it. But I don't know--it seems morbid."

"She still owns that house?"

"Yes. I think--I think she still had some hope that Kathleen or Max would come home again."

"Twenty years of that. Wow. Did she rent it out to someone else in the meantime?"

"No."

"Weird."

"People hold on to hope," he said. "They have to, don't you think?"

"I suppose so. So ...living with her, though. Why did she want you to live with her?"

"She wanted to get to know me. I've been spending a lot of time around her and Helen Swan and Auburn Sheffield, and I even spent time around Warren Ducane just before he left. I like all of them, but I especially like Helen and Lillian." He paused, then said, "I was there yesterday, when the police told Lillian what you'd found."

"Oh no..."

"It was so hard on her, even after all this time. Thank God your friend Helen came over to be with her, because I felt strange as hell, to say the least. And that's my point--I can't have this name and be befriended by these people and then pretend I don't know who that other Max Ducane was. When you looked in that trunk--that was her daughter, her grandson. Warren loved his brother--he set me up to get all of that money because I reminded him of Todd. Don't you see? I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do something to... to bring about justice, if at all possible. I have to use the money to try to find out who killed them."

"All of it?" I asked, startled.

"No, I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. Auburn and Mr. Brennan will still manage the trust until I'm thirty. Let's just say that I have been given enough right now to offer a big reward without becoming a beggar myself."

At this point, I started giving him the pitch. I asked to write his story, including the part about the reward, and started working through a list of things he had told me that could be published without hurting anyone. Some of it--mostly negative personal comments about Mitch and Estelle--he still wanted to withhold. He said I could tell O'Connor or Lefebvre anything that would be of help with investigating the murders, provided it was off the record, too. He didn't want to see anything he had said about Mitch and Estelle's marriage in the paper. I suppose I let what was beginning to be a friendship get in the way and didn't push him about that.

I told him about Mitch showing up at the coroner's office.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "Mitch thinks he has special privileges. I guess he does."

"Your cousin was the one who did the actual talking, I think."

"My cousin? Eric or Ian?"

"Ian--at least, Lefebvre said it was Ian."

"Silver streak in his hair?"

"Yes."

He made a face and gave an exaggerated shudder.

"That bad?"

"Ian and Eric are evil."

I laughed.

"I'm not joking," he said.

I was startled by his tone, his seriousness.

The awkwardness that produced was relieved a moment later, when the waiter came back and asked if we wanted dessert or coffee. We both declined, and soon he was back again, presenting the checks, taking our credit cards with thanks and an appearance of sincerity in his pleasure in serving us.

I could see Max fretting as the waiter walked off. "Don't worry," I said, "my card won't be declined."

He smiled. "I hope someday I'll be able to make this up to you. You know, that we'll be able to do something together and it won't be work for you." He turned red after he said it.

"Do you have a girlfriend at Dartmouth?" I asked.

"No. Not many girls go to Dartmouth--they just started admitting women six years ago. So there weren't many in my graduating class. Not many at all in computer science."

"Oh."

I was scared to death that he was going to say, "Why do you ask?" But he asked a worse question.

"Did you have a boyfriend in Bakersfield?"

"No," I said, breaking eye contact. "No ...just friends. That's all."

"I must have missed that news story," he said.

I looked back at him. "What?"

"The one about all the guys in Bakersfield suffering from blindness."

"It's my charm that allowed them to resist, I'm afraid."

He shook his head.

"I didn't go to Bakersfield in what you'd call a receptive mood," I said.

"Somehow, I sense there's more to this."

"There is, but I need to get back to the paper."

He laughed. "You didn't come back to Las Piernas in a receptive mood, either, I see. Okay, I won't pressure you to talk about it."

The restaurant had become more crowded by the time we left, and the parking lot was full when we stepped outside. Most of the cars were Jags, Mercedes, or BMWs. There was a gaggle of black BMWs parked near the place where we had left Max's. "Are you going to be able to figure out which one is yours?"

"I'll have to look at the plates," he admitted. "Mine will be the one without any yet. But before we do that, let's go over to the fence--have you ever seen the view from this parking lot? It's one of the best in Las Piernas."

He was right. The fence was about waist-high. We could see Catalina Island in the distance, and nearer, sailboats passing the oil islands--man-made islands with oil well drilling rigs on them, the rigs covered and disguised as condos. And beyond, dappled with bright sunlight, a vast expanse of blue-gray sea. The wind brought sea spray and the scent of the ocean up the cliff, and below us breakers roared and hissed.

Max moved a little closer to me, not quite touching me. That inch or so of distance might as well have been the edge of the cliff--tempting and dizzying, but a wise woman would watch her step. I was trying to decide if I would be wise when a deep voice behind us said, "Who have we here?"

He startled the hell out of both of us, and we turned to see a big man who looked enough like the man I had seen at the coroner's office to allow me to guess who he was. Eric Yeager had no white streak in his hair, and wider shoulders than his younger brother.

"Kyle--no, Max," he said, stepping closer to Max, even as I stepped away from both of them. "Oh no, wait--we can't call you that, because Max Ducane is dead." He grabbed Max's shirtfront and said, "I know, I'll just call you cocksucker, since that's what you are." He leaned forward, so that Max was bent backward over the rail. I saw Max's feet leave the ground.

"Let go of me, Eric."

" 'Let go of me, Eric,'" he mimicked. "If I do that, cocksucker, you'll fall and die. Not a bad idea."

"That would be a stupid fucking thing to do in front of a newspaper reporter," I said.

He turned to look at me and narrowed his brows, as if he had just noticed that I was there.

"You've got a filthy mouth, bitch," he said.

"Like you're Emily Post come to teach me manners."

"Irene--" Max said. "Don't."

Eric continued to stare at me. Almost absently, he pulled Max back onto his feet. He let go of him and took a step toward me. "Maybe I will teach you some manners."

I took a step back without thinking, then stood my ground. I let the shoulder bag slip off, but kept hold of the straps in my hand. I moved it a little, trying to get a feel for the best use of its weight.

He saw the step back and laughed. "Talk big, but you're scared, aren't you?"

"Of your breath," I said. "You have a different kind of filthy mouth."

He lunged. I swung the bag up toward his balls as hard as I could.

The bag hit Eric full in the face instead of his family jewels, making a satisfying cracking sound on his nose. I didn't miss the more vulnerable target because I had aimed badly, but because Eric had already been on his way down to the asphalt. He hit it much harder than I had hit him.

I never saw exactly what it was Max had done to him, but he had moved like lightning.

Eric, in contrast, didn't move at all.

"I'm almost sorry we aren't on a date," I said shakily. "Dragon slayers are so damned rare these days."

"Come on," Max said, putting an arm around my shoulders and hurrying me away. "We'd better get out of here."

"Where did you learn to do that karate or whatever it was?"

"Military boarding schools, remember?"

I glanced back at Eric and saw that he was getting to his feet. I started running toward the car. Max ran, too.

We backed out just as Eric came at us from between parked cars. His face was bleeding down the front of his shirt. For a moment, I thought he was going to step in front of the Beemer, but Max hit the accelerator and Eric had at least enough sense left in him to stay back. We burned rubber out of the parking lot and drove lickety-split down a series of side streets, squealing around turns, braking hard, and narrowly missing objects mobile and immobile.

I don't know if seconds or minutes passed that way. I do remember thinking that my father might outlive me after all, and worrying about who would take care of him. The things you think of when you are full of adrenaline.

Almost as suddenly as our wild ride began, it ended. Max pulled over to the curb of a suburban street and parked in the shade of a big oak tree. We sat there, listening to the little clicks and small noises of a cooling engine. He rolled the windows down. Birds chirped up in the tree, a soft breeze blew, and I could hear the stutter of a pulsating lawn sprinkler two houses away.

We were both shaking.

"I've probably made you late to work," he said, "so I'll take the book back to the library for you."

Don't ask me why, but this struck me as one of the funniest things anyone had said in the twentieth century. I started laughing, and so did he.

When we paused for breath, he added, "You'll have to tell me how to get out of here. I'm lost."

That set off another round of laughter.

I looked at him, and what I wanted to do, in all honesty, was kiss the hell out of him. I would swear that he was looking at me in exactly the same way. But neither of us leaned closer, and the moment passed, and we both looked out the front windshield as if the scenery before us would change somehow, must have changed with whatever else had just changed.

"If you go straight ahead to that intersection," I said, "I can read the street sign and probably guide us from there."

"Okay," he said, and started the car.

I figured out where we were and gave him directions until we reached streets he knew. He talked about how someday his GPS devices would be in cars and guide people to their destinations, even if they were in totally unfamiliar places.

It sounded a little far-fetched to me, but that wasn't what really bothered me about it. "Getting lost isn't always so bad, is it?" I asked. "I mean, if you only go where you intend to go, and travel only on the recommended roads, you only see what everybody else sees all the time. You miss the out-of-the-way places."

He smiled and said, "Those who want to be adventurous can simply turn the GPS off."