Legacy of Secrets (80 page)

“God save us,” Brigid gasped, crossing herself while I quickly read the report of how the police had taken eighteen-year-old Jonas Brennan into custody “for questioning,” and how he had been held overnight at Boonespoint P.D. The police had searched Jekyll’s Farm but had failed to find the weapon, though they had found several shotguns on the premises.

I sighed with relief as I saw the headline in the next edition.
JONAS BRENNAN RELEASED
it said, in letters much smaller than before, as though people were already losing interest in Alma’s death and J.K.’s fate. But it was the line beneath that riveted my attention. It said that Jonas Bren-nan’s grandmother, Mrs. Iris Sheridan, had made a statement to the press that it was “a crime against her grandson that he had ever been accused of such a terrible thing.” And that “whoever had shot Alma, it certainly was not him.” She said that “the police had better smarten up a little and find out who the real culprit is, though by now so much time has passed, he probably skipped town long ago.”

“Mrs. Iris Sheridan,”
I repeated, staring at Brigid.

“Did y’ever stop to wonder what the
K
in Jonas K. Brennan stands for?” she asked, thoughtfully.

“Keeffe?” I asked, and she nodded.

“I’ll bet my cowboy boots on it.”

I’ll tell you we were out of that dungeon like a couple of bats from hell, throwing a quick thanks to the woman at the counter. “Y’all want copies of anything?” she asked, and I dashed back again, waiting impatiently while she slowly photostated the articles I needed. And then we were back in the convertible and speeding toward Charleston and the plane back to New York.

I thought worriedly of Shannon and thanked God she was safe in Nantucket with Eddie, because now I was convinced that J. K. Brennan was Bob’s murderer, and that the past had caught up with the present, just the way we knew it would.

B
ACK AT THE HOTEL,
I tucked the exhausted Brigid into her bed and telephoned Shannon on Nantucket to tell her what we had discovered. I let the phone ring but there was no reply, and disappointed, I replaced the receiver and prowled the suite restlessly. I took a leisurely bath, filling the tub with the expensive bath oil Brigid had bought in Bloomingdale’s, lying there with a moisturizing pack slathered on my face while I contemplated what to do. Finally, I put on my makeup, brushed my curls, and changed into a mannish dark-blue pin-stripe Yves Saint Laurent 1980 suit that might have been designed specially for “sleuthing.”

A
ND THEN THE PHONE RANG.
It was Shannon and I sighed with relief. There was a lot of background noise and she said she was calling from the plane. They were on the shuttle flight from Boston back to Manhattan, and they would be here within a couple of hours.

She said, “J.K. called me. He sounded really excited. He said he thought he had the evidence I needed. Oh, Maudie, I’m not supposed to tell you or Eddie, but I’m going to meet him later tonight so he can show me what he’s got.”

“And did he say what that was?”

My voice was sharp and she said quickly, “He’ll tell me
when I get there. But he did say he knew what the ExWyZe Fund really was.”

I thought of J.K. sitting like a spider at the center of the complex web he had created, waiting for her, and I was filled with the sort of deep anger I haven’t felt since I heard my Archie had been killed by the Nazis. “And where is it you’re to be seein’ him?” I enquired.

“It’s odd, but he wants me to meet him at the new Keeffe Tower on Park Avenue. He said to take the freight elevator to the penthouse and he would meet me there at eleven. There was something important I had to see.”

“You are not to go,” I said strongly. “Meet me here and we shall all go along to meet Mr. J. K. Brennan at eleven.”

“He said it was important I told nobody. Not until I had seen what he had to show me, and then the choice was mine.” She hesitated and then said, “You know, Maudie, there was something in his voice, a kind of ‘sympathy.’ Do you think maybe he has evidence that my dad did kill himself, after all? That he wasn’t murdered, and we have all been rushing around looking for suspects when there are none.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I said, wondering exactly what J.K. had up his sleeve. And as I put down the telephone receiver, I was determined that I was going to find out.

I thought the next hour would never pass. I looked in hopefully on Brigid but she was snoring peacefully, and I didn’t have the heart to wake her and tell her the new developments. I stood in front of the TV, switching channels the way she did, but nothing interested me and I went to the window and looked down at the breathtaking view of the magical city. The nighttime skyscrapers were lit like a forest of Christmas trees and I thought of J.K. waiting at the Keeffe Tower for young Shannon, and my stomach churned.

At ten o’clock I scribbled a note, pulled on a slouch-brimmed navy felt hat and sensible-heeled shoes and tucked a camellia from the flower display into my lapel. I picked up Pa’s old hazelwood walking stick, checked my
hair and new Paloma red lipstick and took the elevator down to the lobby.

Everyone in the hotel knew me by now, for haven’t I stopped and had a chat with each and every one of them, from the night manager and the concierge to the bell captain, the waiters and the receptionists, and they all gave me a smile and a greeting as I stepped briskly by. The doorman called me a cab and asked where I wanted to go, looking surprised when I said the new Keeffe Tower on Park. “That building’s not yet finished, Mrs. Molyneux,” he said doubtfully. “Are y’sure that’s where you want to go?”

“Certain, thank you, Patrick,” I said, stepping into the cab while he gave the driver the address.

There was a security guard at the entrance to the foyer and he looked at me with astonishment, as I hurried toward his brightly lit glass cubicle. From his badge I saw his name was Mulligan. Wondering how I ever became so devious, I put on an anxious face and a brogue and said breathlessly to him, “Oh, thank God, ’tis a fellow Irishman y’are, and sure isn’t the whole of New York Irish anyways?” I clung to his little window ledge, trying my best to look pale, and I must have suceeded because he said, “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“I’m being followed,” I gasped, summoning up old memories of Ingrid Bergman in similar situations. “He’s lurking around the corner now, waiting for me…. I would have called a cab but there wasn’t one in sight and I was too frightened to wait around.”

“I’ll check him out for you, ma’am,” he said, coming out from his little office and placing one hand menacingly on the revolver in the holster at his hip. “You just wait right there, honey,” he said, “and then I’ll get you a cab.”

He walked out of the foyer and into the street and I saw him glance from left to right and then turn and look inquiringly at me. I pointed urgently to the left, and he strode off, out of sight to the corner. Grinning wickedly, I fled through the still-unfinished foyer to the back and the big, open-sided freight elevator. I quickly pushed the button,
and I closed my eyes as it lumbered slowly past floor after empty unfinished floor, mere levels of concrete illuminated bleakly with work lights. It looked frightening, and I thought of Bob and all he had gone through to build his unfinished tower: all the long negotiations on prices and contracts, planning permission and tax concessions, all the bureaucracy and wheeling-dealing that went into the construction of a major building in one of the world’s most important cities. And I thought how sad and frightening it looked. It was still only a skeleton and I wondered whether there would ever be any “flesh” on its steel-girder bones.

The elevator lurched to a stop and I stepped out into a different world. The floor of the entry hall was highly polished parquet, and a crystal chandelier, old Waterford if I’m not mistaken, sparkled from the ceiling. I walked cautiously over the soft silk rug in subtle blues and faded bronzes, wondering if J.K. had arrived yet. I peeked through the open double doors and drew in my breath in amazement as I saw more beautiful rugs, and expensive sofas and antique furnishings, and as I tiptoed into the room I noticed that each piece had a sticker on it. A lot number from an auction sale.

And then I saw the painting dominating the wall opposite the windows. Van Gogh’s “Avenue” glowed like an icon under the special low directional lights, and I realized that all this now belonged to J.K. He had bought all of Bob’s things, his furniture and rugs and antiques, just the way he had bought the writer’s Montauk house with all his furniture. He was taking on Bob’s identity, and Bob’s van Gogh, the symbol of his success, was the final touch. It was living proof that he had made his dreams come true.

“Maudie,” J.K. said behind me, and I swung around from the painting, blushing like a guilty schoolgirl caught cribbing from someone else’s notes.

“Did Shannon send you?” He sounded surprised and I shook my head.

“No, she did not, J.K. I’ve come here because I need to discuss some things with you.”

“Can I ask how you knew to find me here?”

“Shannon told me she had an appointment with you.” He nodded and went to the graceful little Sheraton sideboard. “Would you care for a drink?” he asked, pouring himself a glass of brandy.

I couldn’t share a jar with a killer and I said a polite no, thank you. He sat in what they call a French concierge’s chair, one of those hooded boxlike chairs you still find in French hotels or in antiques shops. The high sides cut off the light from his face, leaving him half in shadow, and I wished nervously he had sat opposite me on the sofa.

I’m a curious old biddy, but my curiosity had never placed me in such a strange situation before, and I was never known to be subtle, so I got right to the point. “Why don’t you tell me why you killed Bob?” I asked, because, apart from being concerned about Shannon, that was the one reason I had come to speak to him myself. I had to hear from his own lips why he did it, just so that I would know my theory was right.

“Maudie, why ever would you say such a thing?” he said, sounding pained. He took a sip of his brandy and as he leaned forward I could see he was smiling.

“Because your grandmother was married to Lily’s son, ‘Boy’ Sheridan. And because your mother, Alma Brennan, didn’t die of cirrhosis the way you said she did. She was shot dead in an alley and you were arrested and questioned for her murder. And your name is not Jonas
K.
Brennan, you only added the
K
after you had decided to become Bob Keeffe. To take over his life, his work, his money, and his name, because you felt it rightfully belonged to you.”

“That’s very clever of you, Maudie,” he said. “But then I knew when I met you you were too clever for your own good. Don’t you think it’s interesting that we are cousins?”

I have to admit I had not even thought of that, and my jaw dropped at the idea of being kin to a murderer and a madman. “It wasn’t so clever,” I said. “All we had to do was look into the past. And that’s the trouble at the bottom of it all, isn’t it, J.K.? The past.”

He downed the brandy in one gulp and sat twirling the fragile glass in his fingers, staring down at it. “My life was always a series of wounds, you know,” he said in a polite conversational tone, as though he were talking about something he had read in a newspaper. “All the insults and the jibes, the humiliation and rejection. Nobody wanted the dirt-poor Brennan kid whose grandma lived with a black, and whose mom had slept with every guy in town and more besides. It was only Gran’s tales of the past that had any beauty to them. She told me the stories Boy Sheridan had told her, of his glamorous rich mother, Lady Lily Molyneux, who lived in a Beacon Hill mansion, and about her family back in Ireland. About how many thousands of acres of land they owned, with castles and houses, and their own lakes and rivers. And a hundred servants to do their bidding so they need never lift a finger their whole lives. I used to dream about them, when I was out in the fields picking corn under the broiling sun. Or lying in bed at night, sweltering and mosquito-bitten in summer and half frozen with cold and damp in winter. I would think of them when I put cheap food into my mouth, and cheap clothes on my back, and I thought of them when I was alone in the schoolyard and the other kids taunted me or ignored me. It was always one or the other. And those stories became like legends to me, glowing fables with a cast of glamorous people who never had a care in the world, and who had rejected my grandfather, Boy Sheridan, because Lily had gotten herself into trouble.

“I used to think of the lordly Molyneuxes, back in their castle with their acres and their money, and they haunted me. I was obsessed with the fact that they were still living their wonderful lives, and I was locked out from it all.

“When I was a teenager, I began to investigate the past. I went to the library; I looked up the history of Ireland, and at encyclopedias and maps. I discovered a volume of
Burke’s Peerage
and found the names of my own ancestors in there. I spent as much time researching the Molyneux family tree as I did on my schoolwork, and I knew that, but
for circumstance, I would have been a young Lord living in my Irish castle with money to burn.