Butterfly Sunday (13 page)

All the same, he did, though. In fact, everything turned out exactly as Leona had told herself that it would. Mr. London’s private investigation had turned up with nothing. He couldn’t find a missing penny or an unaccounted-for nickel. That was the tip-off. He knew there was at least two thousand dollars missing. He had Leona’s envelope in his pocket. He brought in a team of auditors, to whom Mr. Crockett served high tea every afternoon. Mr. Crockett thanked them and Mr. London for what he called this opportunity to demonstrate competence
and honesty. The auditors uncovered his trail. It was their conclusion that Mr. Crockett had stolen almost fifty thousand dollars over a five-year period.

Before he informed the police, Mr. London called Mr. Crockett into his office to tell him he’d been found out. Then he told Mr. Crockett to go home and tell his wife and call his attorney. He was going to allow him the dignity of turning himself in to the police. Mr. Crockett well knew there was no point in further denial. He also accepted the fact that any attempted flight would lead to a certain and disgraceful death. Mr. Crockett went back into his office to retrieve his car keys. While he was in there, he shot himself in the forehead.

That evening around eight o’clock, Leona found Ty at the door. Her joy was immeasurable. She threw her arms around him, but he didn’t react. He let her hang off of him as if he were a fence post. Of course, she told herself, he was heartbroken over his father. His grief had swallowed any happiness he might have otherwise felt at seeing her. He was numb with shock and sorrow. Her joy was completely selfish and inappropriate.

“Forgive my insensitivity, Ty. I’m so sorry about your father.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you pulled the trigger.”

She began to pray as she had never before prayed that she didn’t understand what his words meant. Yet it seemed the inevitable outcome, as she remembered him pointing his pistol at her in his office. Mr. Crockett had wanted to shoot her then and there because he understood that she would never suffer in silence. He couldn’t do that and get away with it. He wasn’t quite ready to kill himself, not yet. He was only a step closer than he had ever been.

“Ty, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t let him sacrifice you and me and our child.”

“So you sacrificed my mother and my younger brother and sister instead.”

“I didn’t intend to.”

“Tell me another one, slut. And then tell me who really knocked you up, you vengeful whore!”

His accusations and epithets hit her like a steady stream of molten rocks. His searing hatred was so intense that she drew back into the deepest corners of herself until his voice was distant and his unbearable words were unintelligible. Then he was hitting her with his fists and she experienced falling down, but like in a slow-motion dream. She felt the room grow dim. Then from the other side of the room she watched him hitting and raping her. Later she saw him crying and laying his head on her breasts, and his remorse didn’t make sense. She remembered him picking her up.

Then it was early morning. The rising sun burned into her good eye. The other was swollen shut. She was trying to stand up. There was vomit on her dress. Her knees were bloody. She made it to her feet and looked in the mirror over the fireplace. She looked as if she had been badly burned. Coming closer, she saw bruises and dried blood wherever her flesh was uncovered. She passed the day in bed. The telephone rang fifty times. There was insistent knocking at the front door every hour or so. Did he think she didn’t know that he was sorry? Did he think that made any difference? She was sorry too; sorry he hadn’t killed her.

Or was he coming back to finish the job? She had her father’s pistol on the bedside table. She almost hoped that he would come back. She envisioned telling the police when they took his body away that her only
regret was that he had suffered such a short time. She would have enjoyed his terror.

After two days the bruises began to fade yellow and her swollen face regained its regular outlines. Without the constant pain to stimulate her, Leona’s bitter resolve turned to despair.

She let him in on the morning of the third day. She hated him for looking so weak when he begged her forgiveness. She hated herself for loving him. That made it next to impossible to rebuke his reasons for abandoning her. It wasn’t ambition for himself. It wasn’t even ambition on his father’s part. It was desperation. His father had been a drowning man. He knew his game was almost up. If Ty was married to Gloria, he might use the connection to negotiate some solution. Public scandal would disgrace their daughter as well as hurt her husband’s future.

This was his abject apology?

He was trying to make it all work. Gloria needed a husband for the moment. She didn’t want him for the rest of her life. They’d make it work for each other. Then he was going to square it with Leona. She could even live nearby so they could be together. Of course, she didn’t believe him. He didn’t even believe himself.

He’d left her to bury her mother alone, knowing she was carrying his child, knowing she had to be devastated by his cruelty. No. He hadn’t married Gloria as a sacrifice for his father. He married that unlovable witch for her father’s money. Now Leona had uncovered the truth and his guaranteed annual income was in jeopardy. Tyler Crockett didn’t have any tears in him for his father or his unborn baby. The only grief or joy he experienced was for himself.

He had called her names and raped and beaten her
unconscious. No, she wouldn’t waste umbrage on his empty proposal that she live like his backstreet tramp with his bastard. That was his pathetic attempt to convince her he felt trapped with Gloria. He had no plans to see Leona or his child. He didn’t want them within a thousand miles of his love nest. He had it all now. He had a rich wife who didn’t give a damn whom he slept with or how often. It was perfect. He and Gloria could live their debauched and separate lives in perfect harmony, coming together to perform their duet as a happy young couple from the right side of the tracks whenever it served them.

What was he doing here then? What did he want?

“Tyler, I want you to leave now.”

“I need you.”

“You need my silence.”

“You, I want you.”

“You want to control me.” That was it. He’d beaten her badly. Had anyone seen it? Had she gone for help? Did the police know about it? Or worse, the Londons?

“I love you.”

“Leave now!”

That was it. She had it figured out. Gloria was in love with danger. She’d play one crazy game after another with Tyler until she got bored with it all. Then the endgame would start. If Tyler had beaten Leona, then he’d treated Gloria the same way. Maybe that’s why she went down to Florida and got herself in trouble. Maybe she had already experienced his brutality and she was trying to force him to let go.

“You beat her, don’t you?”

“Never. What happened here was grief.”

As if she’d pressed some button, he pulled her close to him on the living room sofa. He started nibbling at
her neck the way he usually got amorous. He’d made a disaster of her life. His poor widowed mother was at home receiving condolence callers. He had a wife he didn’t want who was knocked up by some other man. Leona still hurt from his beating, and he was pressing his hardness into her thigh and digging his fingers into her pants.

Yet she couldn’t let him know that he was hurting her. He’d go crazy with the thrill. She kissed him. He was all over her.

“Oh, Ty, I need you so badly.…”

“Beg me.”

“Baby,” she whispered, letting her fingers play with him lightly, “hold up a second.” She stood up. “Wait there,” she said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” Then she kissed him and squeezed him, letting him nibble her breasts through her dress. “It’s a big surprise,” she promised as she backed away from him and left the room.

He had taken his pants off by the time she came back.

“Sit down on top of me,” he commanded.

He was a hairless ape. She straddled him and he pushed himself all the way up inside of her. She watched him bucking and rolling his head from side to side with his eyes closed.

“You might better slow down or you’ll finish before we get started,” she whispered.

He ignored her, pumping harder now, moaning and sweating, his eyes glued shut.

“Baby, stop a second,” she said with more force, but he wasn’t listening. He was slamming and puffing and using her to make full-throttled love to himself.

“Stop!” she shouted.

“Can’t, can’t, can’t,” he panted.

But he suddenly discovered that he could. And he did—when the cold steel of her father’s revolver touched his forehead.

“Get your clothes on. And get out,” she said.

Later in the darkness it gave her a measure of comfort to think that this time at least she had sent him away.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1997

6:15 P.M.

Averill sat on the hard sofa in Mrs. Churchill’s overly air-conditioned parlor waiting for her like a cold potato in a refrigerator drawer awaits the inevitable hand and paring knife. It was reputed to be over a hundred degrees outside. Yet here, separated from that sweltering realm by lace-covered Italian windows, it felt like it could snow any minute. If this was the difference between rich and poor, then Averill didn’t see much point in endeavor.

“I’ll be right down, honey.”

Mrs. Churchill’s voice drifted down the magnificent curving staircase like clouds from a better world. She and Mr. Churchill had seen an old pump organ on sale in an antiques store down at Oxford. She wanted Averill
to look at it. If it met with Averill’s approval, she wanted to buy and donate it to his church.

Like he wouldn’t approve? Like she valued his ignorant ideas over her educated ones? “His” church was “hers.” He was her puppy dog, her hobby this month, and that was all right with him. The Churchills were regular patron saints of Averill’s fledgling church. In fact, since they owned it, they were totally responsible for its existence. It had been built by Henri Churchill’s ancestors on their enormous cotton plantation in the 1840s. Succeeding generations of Churchills had married and buried and baptized one another beneath its lavender-and-ivory stained glass windows.

It was a beautiful little church that revealed an unexpected richness of architectural detail—“mini-magnificence,” Mrs. Churchill described it in her self-deprecating banter. It had historic significance as well. In the early days of the Civil War, the Confederate army had used it as a secret arsenal. Two years later General Ulysses S. Grant, who evicted the Churchills from their home in order to ensconce his wife Julia there, stabled his horses in the little sanctuary. There was a small, elevated gallery at the back with a double row of pews. A line of iron loops set into the floor in front of them had once secured the ankle chains of Churchill slaves.

The family hadn’t used it since the early fifties. Or so the current Churchills had told him on his first interview under the swirling plaster filigree of their cavernous parlor ceiling. That was four months ago. He had come in response to their advertisement on the bulletin board outside of the dean’s office. Averill had just finished a general course of studies at Gulf Coast
Theological School. GCTS was really just a run-down two-year college that offered a few extra Bible courses. Graduates who wanted to become ministers of more established Protestant denominations moved on to four-year colleges, followed by graduate seminary studies.

Averill had neither means nor inclination to endure that. He had already outperformed any known member of his family by finishing high school. His two years at GCTS were all the icing he intended to spread on that cake. The mainstream Protestant churches held no temptation for him. They were quirky and out of touch with people. The Methodists were too damned sanctimonious. You could feel it in their handshake, their self-righteous squeeze. The Presbyterians were as dry as fire, as if they could bore people onto the right path. The Baptists had it all, no question. Their sheer numbers and holdings were impressive. A facile young Baptist preacher could make quite a life for himself. But you needed backing to enter those arenas.

Averill’s backing consisted of the sweat of his brow. As for the Catholics, well, their idol the Pope was driving all of them to hell in Italian sports cars. Which really only left the Episcopalians. As far as Averill was concerned, the Episcopal Church was the Pope’s bastard child, a place for divorced, egg-headed and/or sexually deviant Catholics.

A true man of God had no need for all their fancy theologies. All he required was a well-worn King James Bible and a handful of faith. The Apostle Peter had said it all when he declared, “Upon this rock I shall build my church.” Averill had determined to find his rock and start building when the Lord led him to Mr. and Mrs. Henri Churchill. The multimillionaires were restoring the old plantation that had been in Henri’s family
“since the birth of Christ,” Churchill explained with a dry sneer.